09.06.2020
Luiza Hoxhaj
Author: Luiza Hoxhaj
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Cash Monitoring

Most of the business owners and CEOs have shift their attention in profit increases, earning ratios and cost reductions which are used to show elegantly how good an enterprise is performing. However, according to Reider & Heyler (2003), these businesses might forget their most important daily concern – monitoring the company’s cash position. Cash is the most important liquid asset of a business which ensures the payroll is met, new customers are acquired, new products are developed, vendors’ bills and taxes are paid, and most importantly growth and expansion of a business is possible. The amount of cash that a company has on its accounts at a certain point in time portrays the company’s cash position. Monitoring of a company’s cash situation is another way of measuring its financial strength and liquidity. As mentioned by Reider & Heyler (2003), it is the lack of cash which causes companies to fail and not the lack of profit or growth. Not having sufficient cash is a concern of many CEOs who fear they might lose their businesses due to such reason. On the other hand, having too much cash in the accounts can create an opportunity cost called cash drag. By holding too much cash, companies can lose money as the value of cash can decrease due to inflation, when they could have earned more from allocating it in other products with higher returns. In addition to that, we currently face the common situation of negative interest rates, which might lead to the punishment of paying the bank for having too much money on the accounts.

Considering this, the monitoring of cash situation should remain one of the most important aspects for every business. Continuous monitoring of the cash movement ensures the company is on the safe side by not spending more than necessary and at the same time not delaying the payment of invoices. Furthermore, a good cash situation is a safety for potential business crisis and emergencies.

Although it might sound easy, the monitoring of the cash situation is much more complicated for big enterprises. These enterprises have different accounts for a different number of companies. The companies might be located in several countries which use different currencies. When it comes to analyzing these accounts, monitoring of the cash position for each company, no matter the location and currency, requires a special attention of the CEOs.

In the table below we show a typical cash situation where different companies contain different accounts in different currencies.

Figure 1. The typical situation

While external investors are more interested in the company’s cash flow statement on quarterly basis, CEOs and other internal stakeholders should have a look at the cash situation more often and regularly. Therefore, a monthly and even daily overview of the cash accounts is crucial for them. Considering this dab: Daten - Analysen & Beratung GmbH is coming with a cash monitoring solution in the market.

The Solution

By picking the necessary data and information from your SAP© Systems, dab:CashMonitoring is able to reflect your up-to-date Cash Situation on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis. Fully automated and updated in the background, the solution also deals with some common pitfalls when talking about cash positions in your ERP-System.

  1. The solution can handle multiple companies also distributed over several SAP©-Systems to get full overview of the situation
  2. Cash-Pooling which is a commonly used technology in big enterprises can be reflected as well, once the rules are understood and configured
  3. Reporting takes place in a common reporting currency like EUR or USD, without losing the information in which local currency the cash position is held.
  4. Intermediate accounts e.g. for Cheque Payments can be considered and configured.

The analysis shows initially the current and most recent cash situation among the different accounts and company codes. The result table gets updated regularly considering the different transactions on these accounts. Dab:CashMonitoring can also build up a full history of your cash situation, so you will be able to see a historical development over the past weeks and months.

The graph below portrays the most recent cash situation of different companies which are located in different countries.

Figure 2. Cash Situation per Company and Country

Although the presentation of the most recent cash accounts is important, what happens when companies use different currency accounts? In this case, an overview of each of the currency account is needed, especially considering the movements in exchange rates. In the result table we would present the account balance in a currency of your choice (e.g. Euro) which uses the most recent exchange rate for the purpose of conversion and the account balance in local currency. The below graph shows the cash situation of accounts grouped by currency.

Figure 3. Cash Situation per Account Currency

Monthly and Daily Overview of Cash Account Balances

Usually companies tend to make evaluations among different time periods when it comes to analyzing their cash situation. Considering this, it is important to show the changes in cash account balances at certain points in time. The solution provided by dab: GmbH provides a monthly and daily cash monitoring taking into account the different companies, countries, and currencies. In the graph below the cash situation of nine companies is portrayed monthly for the fiscal year 2020. For instance, the Corleone GmbH as seen from the graph has had a lot of changes in account balances in the recent months.

Figure 4. Cash Situation per Company - Monthly

Furthermore, the monthly account balance per country is shown during the fiscal year 2020. For instance, the account balances for companies located in Germany show a slight decrease in May, 2020.

Figure 5. Cash Situation per Country - Monthly

The following graphs give an overview of the account balances daily taking into consideration the different companies located in different countries and the account currency they use. For instance the below graph presents the daily cash situation of the nine companies.

Figure 6. Cash Situation per Company - Daily

In addition a daily portrayal of account balances per each currency is needed considering the movement in exchange rates.

Figure 7. Cash Situation per Currency - Daily

Finally, dab:CashMonitoring can be presented nicely in a simple dashboard composed of different graphs, the most important metrics generated, and detail description of result tables. The image below is an example of a storyboard we have build which can also be accessed in the following link: https://dab-software.results.highbond.com/storyboard_links/zfL8NFwe_NxbdxbSYwZf

Figure 8. Cash Monitoring Storyboard

Conclusion

The monitoring of the cash situation is an important aspect of every business and it should be a daily concern. A healthy business should have enough cash in its account as to cover the expenses, acquire new customers, develop new products, and potentially grow and expand. However, the amount of cash should not be high as to create an opportunity cost. For this purpose, a timely monitoring of the cash situation is required for every company. The solution provided by dab: GmbH provides a current cash situation as well as a daily and monthly overview of the cash accounts for different companies, different locations, and different currencies.

Outlook

We are already working on several enhancements of the solution which incorporate machine learning algorithms for future prediction of the cash situation. We will include open payment relevant transactions from both vendors and customers and will be able to predict with a high accuracy the level of cash for future periods of time. As employee costs like salary and social insurance for instance are the third important pillar that influence a company’s cash situation, we will also include a forecast mechanism for these costs.

References

Reider, R., & Heyler, P. B. (2003). Managing cash flow: An operational focus. John Wiley & Sons.


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