Many businesses ended this financial year with a big question mark hanging over their heads. What will the next quarter, year, or even decade bring? The fiscal and cultural disruption caused by COVID-19 has many business leaders and organisations feeling uncertain about what their next steps should be.
Part of answering those questions lies in having a firm understanding of your bottom line and profit margins. It is important to know what is coming in and going out every month. The first step to ensuring a business stays profitable is proper budgeting and forecasting reports. There are plenty of options on the market to help a business do this well.
We have put together a list of four platforms that are suitable for small to medium-sized businesses.
For businesses that are just starting out in this space, MYOB Essentials is a good place to start. It is an online accounting software platform designed to help businesses across Australia, from small to large organisations. It handles GST, PAYG and BAS reports, invoices, reporting, expenses, and payroll (including Single Touch Payroll). Designed to save time, increase productivity, and stay up to date with compliance obligations from the ATO.
MYOB Essentials makes it easy to work from anywhere. It is fully digital and means business owners can invite accountants, bookkeepers, or their business partners to work together on the books, including managing cash flow.
Track and reconcile expenses automatically by linking a bank account. Compare and improve business performance by creating clear, targeted budgets, and track profit and loss in real-time. Pay employees easily and with confidence and give employees access to payslips and timesheets online.
Float integrates with most of the popular accounting systems in Australia, such as Xero, QuickBooks Online, and FreeAgent. It helps businesses predict their future bank balance and manage their cash day-to-day.
Float is designed to save businesses, accounting, and bookkeeping firms time by offering an alternative to using spreadsheets to manage cash. The user-friendly interface gives businesses the option to plan for up to 3 years into the future, as well as visualise cash flow on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Set budgets for future cash in and out, and they will automatically fill up with invoices, bills, and payments. Want to see how accurate the budgets are? Use Float’s budget vs actuals report to see how realistic the projections are.
With Float, it is possible to update expected payment dates on bills and invoices to when they will actually get paid, without worrying about messing up the data in your accounting software.
There are also useful scenarios tools to model the effects of different decisions on cash flow. For example, hiring a new employee, moving to a new office, or losing a client? Answer those questions in minutes!
For those who would like to plan a bit further ahead, PlanGuru’s projection methods allow SMB’s to budget and forecast for up to 10 years. Get cash flow analysis, financial ratios, and other KPI’s to help evaluate and improve business performance. This platform is QuickBooks, Xero, and Excel compatible.
With an integrated income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, PlanGuru provides over 20 powerful forecasting methods that allow you to project for up to 10 years. These include intelligent, turn-key methods, plus the ability to build custom business drivers, including non-financial data.
PlanGuru provides a flexible structure that will allow for a simple high-level small business budget or a detailed multi-department operating budget with consolidations. The planning framework provides a forecasting tool that can interpret the likely financial impact of specific events with greater precision. The scenario analysis functions in PlanGuru can help make important investments and strategic decisions with confidence around due diligence.
With PlanGuru’s Reporting Tools, it is possible to see the specific aspects of a business that are working and ones that are not. With that insight, it is possible to make adjustments that will help any business succeed.
For businesses that currently make investments, this cash flow planning platform offers SMBs and enterprises a powerful tool to generate investment forecasts. Promoting a simple 5 step model, Riskturn allows businesses to perform a quick and accurate analysis of business investments. The program enables businesses to manage their investment timeline and phase dates easily. To enhance result accuracy, it is possible to control the overlap between phases and note potential time shifts.
After establishing an investment timeline, it is possible to input a project’s cash flows. To ensure an orderly record of all costs and revenues, Riskturn provides inbuilt cash flow templates. It also provides useful features including time dependency, depreciation, and amortisation plans and cash flow model import/export to MS Excel.
With accurate cash flow data, it can determine the risk potentially affecting a project’s profitability. Accounting for both financial and timing risks, it is possible to control the causes of budget overspend effectively. In order to present decision-makers with meaningful results, Riskturn can supply cash flow data for over 10,000 iterations such as ROI, IRR, and DCF. This platform helps to take some of the risks out of investment decisions.
The road ahead is full of twists and turns. It is more important than ever to have the correct financial data in front of us. If you have any issues installing or integrating any financial software, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We are always here to help.
