6个步骤，以更好的现金流预测

A couple of times in my career, I’ve been a member of an executive team that decided to forego awarding themselves an annual salary increase. But only once have I been part of a company that was so short of cash the CFO resorted to selling the furniture back to the supplier and leasing it instead. All of these companies were profitable, and all were subsequently sold for very generous price earnings multiples, giving their owners and investors the returns they were looking for. So, it was all good in the end—even if short-term liquidity made it a bit of a roller coaster ride along the way.

尽管初创企业依靠外部资金，但大型公司通常会有一两个摇钱树的资金增长。但是，无论哪种情况，对增长计划的投资都必须与现金流净净合并；所有时间都进行了足够的谨慎，以阻止陷入流动性危机。这意味着能够快速建模不同方案的勤奋现金计划，例如在不必诉诸外部资金的情况下采取增长计划的速度，或单个关键帐户的损失将如何影响现金流量。显然，公司可以要求的财务储备将确定cash flow planning他们需要;但是，以下是有关该主题的最新文章收集的一些最佳实践：

1. Forecast at least every week

现金流量预测的频率需要运行取决于业务的财务安全。如果苦苦挣扎，可能有必要每天预测现金头寸，以确保有足够的钱支付员工和供应商 - 我可以向您保证您真的不有趣。但是，如果业务更稳定，则每周都可以将现金流预测为足够。不太频繁的分析可能会隐藏每周流入和现金流出的差异可能导致短期问题的情况。

但是，尽可能多地自动化流程并每天运行它，这将带来很大的好处而不是站着闲置。

2.预测未来

Whilst looking at cash flow on a weekly basis will give insight into short-term liquidity, it is essential to look well into the future to identify whether external funding will be needed. That way, facilities can be sourced and put in place well before they need to be drawn upon. Being able to feed on the output of a rolling reforecasting process will improve the accuracy of cash flow forecasts.

The ideal situation is to have a model that combines both weekly and monthly forecasts. However, most cash forecast solutions that are built around aninflexible planning and budgeting solution仅限于一个时间维度 - 天，几周或几个月。但是有manbetxapp闪退 , the time hierarchies are very flexible and easy to manipulate so users can easily combine daily, weekly, and monthly data in their models. This makes it easy to model scenarios such as how opening their stores an extra day every week would impact a retailer’s month end cash position.

3.混合不同的方法

预测短期现金流量通常始于公司的现金收入和应收账款和应付账款分类帐的支出。另一方面，预测现金流程较长时期倾向于使用间接方法，例如在预测损益表中对收入和支出销售订单项进行建模。使用不同的时间段具有灵活性来互换两种方法，这两全其美。

4. Forecast at an appropriate level of detail

在高度汇总的水平上建模现金流量会产生不太有用的结果。在诸如业务部门，客户类型或付款方式之类的颗粒状级别上工作会产生更可预测的结果，并洞​​悉需要补救措施的问题领域。当关键客户的付款形成应收账款的很大一部分时，应单独建模，将分析降至另一个级别。现在有内存解决方案，例如Anaplan可用，易于导入和分析应收帐款和应付帐单分类帐。

5.使其实时

在不确定的经济中，需要不断更新现金流计划的假设以反映实际的交易条件。而且，它们应该容易修改以产生不同的情况。这意味着能够快速更改基于模型的业务规则，例如通过不同的属性重新组合客户，并预测DSO和不良债务提供的关键指标的新价值 - 并立即取得结果。这样的方案分析是不切实际的，而现金流预测置于旧版计划和预算解决方案中，该解决方案需要先进的脚本技巧以更改业务规则，并以批处理模式进行计算。

6. Monitor the accuracy of your model

支撑您的现金流预测模型的假设需要基于现实。预测与实际现金流之间的监视差异，如在任何预测的前几周所反映的，将很快发现改进的机会。那些具有商业或面向客户角色的人应涉及修改假设。实施更改后，应监视其影响，以确保它们有效。

Measuring forecast accuracy is just one element of the functionality that our partners, PricewaterhouseCoopers, built into theirapp for short-term cash flow planning现在可以在Anaplan App Hub。它提供了一种完全集成的方法来预测应收账款和应付账款余额，并且可以定制以满足特定的业务需求。如果我的前雇主可以访问这样的应用程序，谁知道，我们可能永远都不会为这些家具提供服务。