Cash is King. In many articles, the well-known phrase comes up again often. Because of the current crisis, many companies are getting into trouble. Often because there is not enough cash in reserve. For many companies, it is currently unclear whether they can keep their heads above water. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of attention on how important cash is for an organization. This was a trigger for me to take a look at how easy it is to build a cash flow statement in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Cashflow: Excel vs. SAP Analytics Cloud
You can, of course, quickly put together such a cash flow statement in Excel. But because the entire company feeds cash flow and therefore often depends on many different people, I made the choice to build this entirely in SAC. SAP Analytics Cloud offers the ability to look beyond a simple list of flat numbers. It works from a department-based plan. The figures used in the overview come directly from those plan models. This makes the overview a lot more dynamic. When an expectation is changed at the departmental level, the impact on cash flow is immediately clear.
Scenario planning in SAP Analytics Cloud
In SAC, it is possible to work with different versions. This makes it easy to put a best case and worst case scenario side by side. It is also possible to show what sales forecast and realization deviate from each other. This makes the analysis of underlying causes easier. For example, it could be that problems at a supplier mean that more expensive semi-finished products have to be sourced. These of course have a direct impact on margins and cash out.
Below I show how to make a quick adjustment on purchasing. We are using more expensive materials than usual. So the cost per bike will increase. Using the "Data Action Trigger" in SAP Analytics Cloud, those new numbers are immediately incorporated into the cash flow model. You are immediately able to do an analysis on the impact on net cash flow from the business results.
A clear overview of cash flow in SAC
The figure below shows the results of the action taken.
Due to the various government crisis measures, we are adjusting the cash flow model. Thus, we also remove the calculated taxes from the cash flow, since the payment can be postponed until a later time. The only thing left for us to do then is to enter or load the current bank account position from your system and then run the bank positions through the next few weeks. And then we can draw the conclusion that this company is not in very good shape in terms of cash.
Learn more about SAP Analytics Cloud or get started hands-on?
Are you also curious about the possibilities for cash flow planning or business planning in general in SAP Analytics Cloud? You can register for our workshops or other knowledge events on SAC. For the most up-to-date schedule, check our calendar.
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