Cash Flow Planner

Introduction and FAQs

What is the Cash Flow Planner?

The Cash Flow Planner is an interactive tool that gives you a view of your cash position over the next 3 months. The tool shows historical cash flow (historical data will be added after the V1 release). It's easier to see an up-to-date snapshot of cash flow and helps you feel in control. You can make more informed decisions about spending and bringing money in. You can use the tool to make important daily or weekly decisions like:

• When should I pay my bills?
• Should I hold off on buying that new equipment?
• Who should I bug to pay my invoice?
• Will I be able to make payroll?
• What problem is it solving?

It’s difficult and time consuming for you to pull together the information you need to effectively manage cash flow. Many small business owners use their intuition and mental math. Others hunt down numbers from different sources and enter them into a spreadsheet that they struggle to keep updated. Ultimately, this leads to stress and suboptimal decisions.

How does the forecasting work? What data is included?

The cash flow planner pulls in data from a number of sources in order to reduce the amount of manual entry needed for you to get a representative view of your business cash flow.

In the future your Planner will show the following:

• Any outstanding QuickBooks Online (QBO) transaction with a date in the future – Invoice, Bill, Expense, Sales Receipt, Recurring Transaction. These events will be labelled with their QBO transaction type (e.g. “Invoice,” “Bill,” etc.). Once these are paid, they will no longer show up in the Planner as an expected future event.
• Predicted Recurring Transactions: predicted recurring money in or money out events generated by a machine learning model. These predictions are based on recurring patterns found in your bank history (the transactions do not have to be accepted/categorised to do this). The Planner does not (yet) leverage QBO data to make these predictions. These will have the label “Predicted.”
• Any events added manually in the cash flow planner. These will have the label “Planned.”

• Note: Our team will continue adding additional predictions to the Planner to give you more insight into your money in and money out cash flow, including credit card payments.

These features will be coming shortly:

• Historical cash flow data: The cash flow planner will not show historical data immediately. However, once historical data is added to the Planner, it will only show data from connected bank accounts.
• 1 month, 3 month, 6 month toggle: The V1 launch will include a 30 and 90 day forward-looking only view.
• Bar-chart view: The V1 launch will only include the line chart view of total cash balance projected over time. We will fast-follow with the bar chart view of aggregate money in and money out.

How can I make edits or changes in the Planner? Will changes impact my books?

Any additions or edits made in the Planner will not impact your books. It is a test environment for you to plan and forecast. To add a future event, tap the “plus” icon in the upper right corner of the screen or tap the call to action at the bottom of the list of events that says “add event.”

When editing a future event that has an associated transaction in QBO, the product will display the date and amount of the QBO transaction – e.g. the “expense/due date” and “expense amount” – as well as the “expected date” and “expected amount” – the dates and amounts shown in the Planner. You can only edit the expected date and amount.

The cash flow planner will not show historical data for the V1 release. However, once historical data is added to the Planner, you will not be able to edit, categorise, or add these transactions to your books from the Planner. You should go to the Banking (aka Transactions) centre to take these actions.

Who can access the Cash Flow Planner?

• It’s only on iOS (web and android will be added later)
• You will need the latest version of the iOS app
• Will only work if multi-currency is turned off and GBP is set as home currency
• Accountants can access the planner through their clients accounts if the client has it enabled but they can’t access it for their own QBOA file.

How is the current/today’s cash balance determined?

Today’s or current cash balance is the total of all cash in your connected bank accounts. Due to delays in getting refreshed data from connected bank accounts, sometimes the cash balances can be out of date. You can always manually edit “Today’s Balance.”

Can I delete an event in the Planner?

Yes! Simply swipe left on the event in the list.

Why does the cash flow planner tool focus on 30 and 90 days out?
We’ve conducted extensive customer testing and found that this timeframe is the sweet spot for cash flow planning for many small businesses. Seeing potential issues much less than 30 days out doesn’t give you enough time to react, and most small businesses don’t yet have the details to plan beyond 90 days out.

What are some scenarios that small or medium small businesses (SMBs) can use the cash flow planner to better manage their business and make smarter decisions?

There are a variety of scenarios in which the cash flow planner will empower you to make better decisions for your business. The planner alerts you when a cash crunch situation is coming up, and shows what is causing the issue so you can decide how to navigate the upcoming challenge.

For example, you can easily see what expenses or changes in income might cause the shortfall, and can make decisions such as “do I need to delay this expense? If so, by how much? Do I need to pressure this client to pay on time? Can I afford to buy a new company car this month, or should I wait? What would be the impact on hiring a new employee?”

For example, rather than dipping into personal funds, like a pension, to make an upcoming payroll run, with advanced notice of a cash flow crunch, you can take a variety of actions such as delay paying a bill, request an invoice be paid faster or take short term financing from a third party.

In addition, the cash flow planner can be used for scenario planning, answering questions like “Is it safe to hire another employee right now given the outlook on my cash flow in the next three months?”

I see a notification about overdue transactions in my planner. What does this mean?

This refers to any unpaid QB invoices or bills for which the due/expected date is now in the past. Because these transactions will not show up in the Planner unless you have due dates or expected dates in the future, this notification will prompt you to update the expected date so that the transaction will show up as a future event in the Planner. Any changes to the expected dates will not change the due dates on QuickBooks transactions.

Does the cash flow planner automatically update? Does it save my manual input?

The Cash Flow Planner does save all of your manual input. If you make updates in both the Planner and outside of the Planner in the rest of QBO, the Planner will use the last updated amount or date.  Here’s an example of how this works:

• Emma creates an invoice for 100 in QB. She will see this invoice with an expected amount of 100 in the Planner.
• Emma edits the expected amount to be 90. Next time she visits the Planner, she will see the “due amount” is still 100 but the “expected amount” is 90. The Planner assumes she will receive 90 on the due date.
• Emma then edits the invoice in QB to be 110. Next time she visits the Planner, she will see the “due amount” is now 110 and the “expected amount” is 110. The Planner will assume she will receive 110 on the due date.

How does the Cash Flow Planner introductory First Time Use (FTU) work?

Note: if you don't have any future events to show in the Planner, you'll be able to explore the Planner with sample data in order to learn how it works. Once you start using the Planner with your own data, you will not be able to return to using sample data.