As the first of its kind for the industry in Australia, the Cash Flow planner will help SMBs make informed financial decisions to manage cash flow more effectively, at a time when it is needed more than ever.
Director of Product Management at Intuit QuickBooks Australia, Mindy Eiermann, said “over the course of June and July, 72 per cent of Australian businesses reported that a reduced cash flow will have an adverse impact on their businesses.1 Yet prior to the pandemic, Australian small businesses were already struggling with money, with 52 per cent of saying they experience cash flow problems and struggle to pay themselves.”2
“Our machine learning technology, which will be rolled out to Canada, in addition to Australia from this week will allow SMBs and their accountants or bookkeepers to analyse the current cash situation and develop a forecast to identify the best ways to manage cash flow.”
“It could be the difference that helps businesses stay in business,” Eiermann added.
Cash (flow) is king
The Cash Flow Planner is an interactive tool that predicts cash flow over the next 90 days in real time. It will enable users to better analyse their cash flow position – such as if their position is strong enough to make payroll, determining when bills should be paid or whether they can afford new expenses.
The analysis looks at both money coming into the business and money being spent, using the data in QuickBooks and bank transactions to model future scenarios. Users are also able to conduct ‘what-if’ analysis by adding new events or editing predicted events.
It also provides the option to play with different scenarios to help predict cash flow positions and make more financially savvy decisions, which will be vitally important for SMBs as they slowly emerge from the COVID-19 lockdown.
The more the Cash Flow Planner is used, the more it learns, based on users’ previous expenses and incomes entered on the QuickBooks platform.
“It’s not business as usual for many Aussie small business owners and because of that, it’s important we provide our customers with new tools to help them manage their businesses during this difficult period, especially when money is even tighter,” adds Eiermann.
Backing SMBs
The Cash Flow Planner predicts recurring money in or out, based on patterns found in users’ bank history, reducing manual inputs and in return, saving time, which small business owners can use to do what they are passionate about.
“Many SMBs are fighting to survive. As such, new technology innovations that can take existing data, analyse it and make recommendations in real time, will not just save time, but give small business owners more confidence in their financial abilities,” concludes Eiermann.
About Intuit QuickBooks
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