Typically, cannabis businesses are focused on producing accurate management reports quickly to meet critical deadlines or real-time demands.
Without the proper business management tools, it can be difficult to create accurate and timely cash flow forecasts. Cash flow forecasting may not be the most exciting subject but having a cash flow forecast is essential to the overall financial well being of your cannabis business.
The fundamental purpose of cash flow forecasting is to generate a cash balance prediction to check that financial obligations can be met. Alternatively, it will highlight potential problems and allow decisions to be made to increase or reduce borrowing, revise payment terms, change credit control policy, or adjust investments.
It’s fair to say that most cash flow forecasts are probably prepared in Excel. It’s easy to use and easy to distribute but it is, of course, a separate set of numbers with no audit trail.
While this might be what your business is used to, it’s probably time to invest in a software that can reduce manual data entry, mitigate errors, and greatly diminish the time it takes to generate an accurate cash flow forecast.
QuickBooks cash flow forecasting features empower you to make detailed projections based on your revenue and expenses. Easily organize your income and expenses by account, project, category, or company. QuickBooks Online allows you to generate cash flow reports, make smarter decisions, spend your time more wisely, and help your company perform better.
Of course, the biggest caveat to QuickBooks is housing information in disparate systems. Having to manually enter data back and forth between your seed-to-sale software and accounting software leaves plenty of room for error that can result to inaccurate, costly forecasting.
The best way to manage cash flow forecasting in through your dedicated ERP software. Housing all your operations and financials in one place makes cash flow forecasting as easy as pressing ‘ctrl + E’.
With a true cannabis ERP software, cash flow forecasting is built directly into the system. You can set-up multiple cash flow forecasts that can be used to capture and present data based on different parameters. The Forecasts are built on a Cash Flow Accounts Structure, typically the structure of the cash flow accounts will correspond to the high-level structure of your General Ledger (G/L).
Using the familiar Heading, Begin-Total, Entry (instead of Posting), and End-Total accounts makes set up and on-going maintenance very simple. Also, if used in conjunction with powerful reporting tools, such as Jet Reports and Power BI, you can create cash flow forecasts that are more accurate, quick and easy to use, and centrally recorded.
From start-ups to global market leaders, cash flow forecasting is critical for all cannabis businesses. Does your cannabis business have the right cash flow forecasting tools in place?
Contact us today to see how a centralized ERP software makes cash flow forecasting quick and easy!
