One of the surprises to people who are new to business is that profit does not always result in surplus cash. To help you know when you will have surpluses and shortages of cash, Sage 50 provides a tool called the Cash Flow Manager.<\/p>\n
To get to this tool, click on the Analysis menu at the top of the main Sage 50 window and choose Cash Flow Manager. The \u201cUsing cash flow manager\u201d window may pop up. Review it if you want and then close it.<\/p>\n
At the top of the screen you can set the time frame. A drop down box that lets you choose how many days or months out you want to project. The minimum is 7 days, the maximum is 12 months.<\/p>\n
To the right is a button labeled \u201cChange Cash Flow Settings\u201d. This lets you make some important choices about how your projections are made:<\/p>\n
You can click the Update Cash Flow<\/em> button to apply your settings or click Cancel <\/em>to undo any changes you have made.<\/p>\n Back on the main window are 3 tabs: Starting Cash<\/em>, Expected Incoming Cash<\/em>, and Expected Outgoing Cash<\/em>. Starting Cash<\/em> will already be selected. You will have a list of cash accounts. You can select which accounts you want to include in your calculations.\u00a0 You can also add lines to run \u201cwhat if\u201d scenarios. Below that will be a table of numbers and a bar chart summarizing the current projections for cash balance, incoming cash, and outgoing cash. Any changes that you make are immediately reflected here.<\/p>\n Moving on to the Expected Incoming Cash<\/em> tab, you will see that it looks basically like the Starting Cash<\/em> tab, but instead of selecting cash accounts, you can select invoices and other transaction that you want included in your projection. You can change the amount if you expect a partial payment. Also notice that the first line is empty so that you can enter other items that you want to include in the projection that aren\u2019t in Sage 50, such as a cash from a loan or customer deposit. To enter more than one item, click on \u201cAdd new row\u201d<\/em> at the top right.<\/p>\n The Expected Date<\/em> here is either the due date or an estimated date based on that customer\u2019s average days to pay, depending on what you chose in the cash flow settings. If an invoice is past its expected date, it will not be included in your projected cash. If you think it should be included, you can change the expected date to a date within your forecast time frame and check the Include box. You can also uncheck invoices that you think should not be included, such as invoices that are in dispute.<\/p>\n The last tab is Expected Outgoing Cash<\/em>.\u00a0 It looks identical to the incoming cash tab and works the same way, except that it list AP and payroll transactions.\u00a0 If your projection is based on open items, the only payroll transactions that will show up are payroll checks that are already posted and that fall in the selected date rage. To include payroll estimates, you need to enter them manually in the top line of Expected Outgoing Cash<\/em>. Click on \u201cAdd new row<\/em>\u201d to enter additional payroll or other estimates.<\/p>\n As you make changes on each tab, the balance in the bottom half of the window is updated immediately so you can see results for different scenarios. When you are done you can print your projections, send them to Excel, save them so you can come back to them later, or Reset to start fresh.<\/p>\n