Industry sign banking maryland presentation online
[Music] everyone my name is keith bateman i am the head of us marketing at receipt bank and i want to welcome you to forecasting for the future webinar on the industry insights to ignite business growth in it we'll be including the development of cash flow forecasting as a service as well uh thanks again for joining us today uh for this special cpa innovation summit experience webinar i'm really excited for the upcoming other webinars during this couple of month long event leading up to december so today like i said we're going to be sharing insights on cash flow forecasting using exclusive research with over 150 accounts and bookkeepers that we got from our orange select community this is literally content made for and by accountants which i'm really excited about so let's go ahead and get started with it [Music] we're going to talk through the importance of cash flow forecasting as a service and share three key insights derived from data collected via our community of accounting experts today we'll also explore what is cash flow forecasting examine why the demand is slow low among clients and the tools currently being used and why real-time data is so vital to reducing the most effective projections we'll also share in the advocate spotlight on stewart hearst of accounts and legal who will share his keen insights on cash flow forecasting then we'll finally cover the products and tools we offer that can help you surface the data you need quickly efficient and efficiently efficiently for cash flow forecasting so before we get started a little bit about us at receipt bank if you haven't heard of us before we're the world's leading digital bookkeeping tool and platform we integrate seamlessly with the leaning ledgers from xero to quickbooks and integrate with all the tools you maybe already use like gusto build.com um just to name a couple um we help you get data faster so that you can live you deliver even more value to your clients we work with over 400 000 businesses 50 000 plus accounts and bookkeepers and help to process over 12 million receipts a month by receipts we mean everything from invoices bank statements and actual receipts that come from shoeboxes um now can actually be scanned in and help uh advisors worldwide across the globe we have offices from everywhere from australia south africa london um to paris france so um it's glad great to be here today and i'll talk about this topic with you all and that's just a little bit of background on this and we'll we'll get back on it a little bit while later on when we touch on how getting accurate data is so important to the process of forecasting but let's get into our first uh bit about research and how this whole presentation came to be so how did it all start well in september of 2020 we surveyed about 150 accounts bookkeepers and advisors including our own resident expert mel dally on how they use cash flow forecasting this all took place on orange select which is reciping's online partner community that offers members networking opportunities exclusive content and rewards so if you're familiar with sites like accounting today accounting web um insightful accountant those kind of member groups uh content curator stuff like that orange like is very similar to that but we've created this own community of accounts within receipt bank that they can come and share topics questions content all within that so we created our own little community there of that and so we thought it was great that we could leverage it and put this survey in there and get their thoughts on cash flow forecasting so that that is where these insights will come from accounts just like yourself some that are just starting with cash flow forecasting others who are who have been doing it for years that's why it's so great that we get all all insights from all over the spectrum and we're happy to share them with you today so let's jump right into forecasting for the future and what that actually means in regards to our clients and to our firms so cash flow forecasting is a really a vital step in determining the overall health of a business maintain the health cash flow maintaining a healthy cash flow is good but taking the steps to determine future growth is even better last year our intuit study surveyed 3 000 small businesses in the uk us australia canada and india and found that the majority of small businesses around the world close to 61 percent struggle with cash flow and now you can imagine that that number has probably gone up by another 15-20 points uh since the start of coveted and even today as countries like the u.s struggle uh even the uk continues to struggle with covet surges and capacity for small businesses and productivity of those small businesses is still around 20 to 40 percent of what they were pre-coveted but when we talk about cash flow forecasting as you can see it's really about staying on top of business financials um and allowing small businesses to prepare for multiple outcomes whether those are good outcomes or bad gum outcomes of knowing what could happen and allowing those businesses to set up preparations for them you know cash flow forecasting is also a tool that accounts and bookkeepers can use to ensure that those businesses have the financial support in place um as they grow as well so they can put those monies away um put those monies into their pipeline so they can as they scale they're prepared for it as well so the first insight that we derive from our survey is that there's that our partners have told us or our accounting partners have told us that they're seeing a low demand for cash flow forecasting um and despite the positive impact that cash flow forecasting can have um you know we got this response that among their client pools there is a relatively low demand so let's look into that and see what we can actually derive from that so as you can see from the pie graph um pie chart here um you know you can see that over 54 of accounts of bookkeepers surveyed stated that their client demand is low for cash flow forecasting as a service and now i you know i'd be interested to know that if you're seeing the same response within your firm or practice um is the demand on your end of the spectrum on that high side where it's about 10 or are you seeing higher demand for it um what we have to think about here is that i think cash flow forecasting was something that is a not always the most marketed service from the firm side it kind of falls under that advisory service umbrella where it may not be the thing you start with when you're marketing to people i think a lot of clients come in looking for compliance type services tax you know tax help and stuff like that um you know loan for you know ppp uh advice um things like that especially nowadays um and this kind of cash flow forecasting type service isn't always something that you market or lead with um on the other end of the spectrum clients aren't always asking for that either they may not know that's something that necessarily exists in that type of format or that type of package they're they're coming in like i said looking for the typical compliance services that come around tax and regulations and pvp loan attribution how they should use those things as well as some other type of uh you know bundle services that follow their advisory they may not be necessarily asking for that type of service when it's actually something that would be very very valuable to them which is why i think this next stat that we'll see up here on the screen is super super interesting in that only about one in two accounts offer cash for forecasting they only only offer it when the client requests it um so there are many many of our accounting partners are waiting until a client requested to actually offer it so that that puts those numbers more into perspective is that many are waiting waiting back and not actually marketing that to their clients and are waiting to someone actually comes up to and says hey can you help me in in forecasting out the next two three four five months of my business and laying out multiple scenarios of how things could play out based on my current uh influx of cash and infusion of cash based on different scenarios so i think this is something where um you know like i said it falls on both sides of the spectrum you know it's not something that accounting firms aren't necessarily doing a great job of you know marketing out because they may not be prepared to provide that type of service to all their clients um but also it's not something that clients always are asking for because they don't know they need it as much because they're so much in the weeds and thinking about today's concerns in this month's paying this month's rent or paying our employees this month that they're not thinking three months down the road or six months down the road um even though they should be even though it would help them next month or two months from now if they were thinking about it two months down the road um uh when those concerns you know they could avert some of those roadblocks that they were so you know i think both of those things fall on on the account and the client um but you know like i said why is this demand so low it's that many business owners you know aren't financial gurus they don't go into business as a financial guru um thinking a year ahead of time um they focus on their bank balance in the here and now they focus on you know how much money they are making today um what does the bank look like when i open up my banking app in the morning um they sometimes can have a short side view of the health healthy of a healthy cash position especially now like i said when many are living month to month paycheck to paycheck because of being at such a lower capacity because of legal conditions and lockdowns it's just natural that they do that because of the situation they're in but financial advisors should be holistic and relay what they need before they actually know they need it and that is the true value of an accounting partner an accounting advisor is that you come to them with information they didn't need they they know they need it and provide them a path forward a guidance to their future of how they can avoid roadblocks how can they avoid errors and provide them different pathways to success um and i think i i love that aspect of an accounting or bookkeeper position is that you can you can help them see through the weeds to help them see through the jungle um because they're so far into it that they can't you know see through the four the trees through the forest um so that's the thing and clients like i said are generally asking for compliance services but their outlook is actually generally changing and that's one thing our partners brought up is that even though the demand isn't there right now gradually comply their need for compliance services or asking or urging of combined services is changing um as as advanced for more in-depth analysis of their business is changing um and it's also on the flip side like i said one quote as you can see in the bottom right is that one partner said that this is potentially a new service cash flow forecasting is a new service that they're looking into but they're not sure what software they use how to set up how to provide it in a valuable way to their customer into their client um and that they were previously doing forecasts on spreadsheets and those weren't always you know the right way to do it the most accurate way to do it so it is some of that technology gap too um that you know accountants like yourself may not feel prepared to do the analysis that a client needs um so that's some of it as well um but the counts are i know getting gradually out of this catch-up mode or this data recorder mode and are looking more into that advisory way where we're becoming getting out of this you know data manual entry and putting into spreadsheets the data that gets into us every day but we're automating we're putting in technology to automate a lot of that data entry so that we can start put writing that guidance to our to our clients that actually need it and that and that's the important part of this you know the benefits of cash flow forecasting um communicating those is a key part of this too is that like i said clients don't know they need it until you really tell them because they're thinking about today and what's in my bank account today how do i survive today um so it's important to communicate those benefits to them effectively the benefits of cash flow forecasting include you know planning for cash gaps budget impact visibility cash shortage management staying on top of overdue payments and making better business decisions um through the use of this information cash flow forecasting is beneficial to businesses in a number of ways and this be said that many businesses want to know how they'll perform in the future so that's one thing that you can say to them is that don't you if i could give you the information or if i could give you you know some level of accuracy of how your business is going to reform 90 days from now wouldn't you want to know that information and i guarantee you whether it's a good or bad outcome or good or bad forecast many many business owners are going to say yes i would love to know what my future you know what my future shows because then i can do something about it um when we all whether it's inside our other business if you could tell me what my future is and i have the ability to do something about it wouldn't i um business owners also think about multiple scenarios uh in this situation um what might happen three months from now that i that could affect my business um what what are the future trends within my industry can they expand their services should they hire more people or do they need to let people go in order to positively affect their business or stay sustainable you know these are all questions that they are going to be thinking um when you when you are trying to provide this firm or asking about cash flow forecasting and these are all questions that keep them up at night you know especially about the things of expanding their services you know if they were to open up a new product line or pivot their business and add and get more cash flow from that how much longer would that allow them to operate would that allow them to add more staff or vice versa if they eliminate different services would that allow them to you know stave off um you know would that allow them to save money by not throwing more cash into something that's actually losing them money or if they cut staff would that allow them to save enough cash flow to stay open three months more longer even though that hurts to eliminate people would that actually save them enough money to save the other 50 of their employees for four more months so allowing that to answering those questions for them giving them those scenarios will actually give them peace of mind um you know and not you know answer those questions that keep them up at night so the question i have for you and that i want you to think about is how do you communicate the benefits of cash flow forecasting to your clients you know how do you answer those questions for them how do you show them the benefits um that you that cash flow forecasts and give to them are you already doing these things are you already communicating the benefits to them effectively whether it's through your website or whether it's through you know communication documents or emails or is it not something that you feel like you effectively do today um you know or if it's is it think something that you want to get into and these are questions that you want to think about because i feel like um it can be something it can be hard to approach because like we said you know our our customers minds and our clients minds are in so many different places but we know that these are questions that that that weigh on them so if we can effectively put this in front of them and help them answer these questions it is going to be a great value to them so um you know think about it do you effectively communicate these benefits to them or how are better ways that you can do it and the
ast thing on that is you know this can be a core piece of your advisory services package and i think that's a critical part is that advisory is a big buzzword that many of your clients probably do know about they want advice and advisory has become this big bundle word for many different things but cash flow forecasting can become one of the cornerstones of that package that you provide so that's maybe a way in of how you can market this to your clients as well insight number two is you know more traditional tools are still favored over the more advanced ones um and i think that's interesting so um in that there's a lot more forecasting tools on the market um but they're still not as favored as the ones the more simplistic ones that have been around for a couple decades um you know despite being automated ai driven tools out there for predicting aggregate cash flow accounts are still being underutilized many accounts still communicate that they are still slightly hesitant to fully let go of classic excel spreadsheets which you may find not as surprising as i do i think because i've worked with many small businesses on getting them to adopt technology and automate many processes that i've seen the trend go towards automation and towards technology but you may find it that working with many of your clients and many other practices within the accounting field that you may see this trend kind of slowly adopting a slow adoption but i think something we can all agree on is that during this period of time many small businesses are more open to technology um and i think more accounting practices are more open to technology now more than ever because they know the importance of automation and freeing up their time to focus on other pieces of their business and as well as their clients so the survey the survey also highlighted a varied toolkit as well so it's not just excel but it's all the different pieces that you see on the screen so some of these you may not have heard of before because as we said this was a global survey of our partners but many of them you probably have as you can see excel quickbooks some of their in uh in-house reporting xero has some in-house reporting as well sage another one um and then receipt bank and xavier xavier is a uh a solution that we have that's available now in the uk and australia it's a zero-based platform that gives very in-depth insights um and will be coming to the u.s region next year which we're really excited about but many of these you can see there's many different ones out there but still over 25 percent of our accounting professionals chose excel 25 did which little bit surprises me but people love excel they can't get they can't get enough of it so um not too surprising there i guess um and then it's second place was uh quickbooks cash flow forecasting functionality uh with close to 20 surveyed and though different algorithms and the lack of visibility over the math can affect trust uh in the levels of technology and the different levels of technology um it doesn't matter because as long as you have access to clean and accurate data you can build upon that so what that means is that no matter what platform you embrace to begin with as long as your data is flowing to you in real time and it's accurate that gives you the building blocks to forecast and build a forecasting model for your clients so data is king data is the cornerstone for any forecasting model um or platform that you're using and that's what you should be focused on and that's what we'll touch on a little bit later with receipt bank um so a question for you to think about is how does that sound how do these insights come to you do any of these insights come to you as a surprise that that many people are using excel still is your firm using excel for cash flow forecasting or as a general kind of platform for everything um uh so i would love to think about that or are you looking to invest in a platform that can do more for you and provide those insights for you so you can automate more all the more of those manual reporting and dashboards and and entry to create those reports because it can save you a lot of time but like we said having access to real-time clean accurate data is is the key to any platform that you use so if you are one of those people that is looking to invest in in a more integrated platform a more new age platform i should say um you can use this checklist to break down the value that these tools offer and whether you can integrate these with the value um with the value that a spreadsheet also brings so the first thing is does that platform that you're looking at integrate with accounting platforms so can it integrate with your gl the general ledger that you're using so can integrate with quickbooks xero uh can it integrate also with uh if you're using gusto for payroll or bill.com for bill pay um can it integrate with your tech stack which is important so um that's one thing because you don't want to have to manually duplicate things you don't have to have to do something in quickbooks and then export it and put it into your uh into your daily reporting system that that just takes more time than it's worth um the other thing is is it easy to use and that when we say that is it easy to use not only for yourself but is it also easy to use with your clients can your clients access the reports from there are they able to figure it out without you having to handhold them every time they log in because once again you don't want to have to be stuck in a situation where you're having to spend a phone call every time they're trying to look at the report that you send them because it's so complicated and so complex there's a lot of platforms out there that can do so many different things for you but you need to be an i.t professional to use them trust me i've used some of those platforms and it was an issue because like i said they could do everything on the side for you but they were not designed to be marketable they weren't designed for the end user they were designed by data scientists um who could use them because they designed them but they weren't built for the end user which is which is a shame um so make sure that not only you internally as an accounting professional can use it but make sure your restaurant clients or your construction client can easily access the data and can use it whether they're 25 years old or 75 years old the next thing is can it perform short and long term forecasts and by this i mean can it quickly develop scenario you know build out reporting and forecast for 30 16 90 120 and you know 360 you know and you know 12 to 24 months down the road um you know can't give you both those scenarios because your client may only want a 30 60 90 today but as they grow as they grow in value with you and as you help them guide them through those those that first quarter and that second quarter you want to be able to expand into larger reporting and growing that value with them and giving them a larger plan and putting that larger planet place with them so you want a platform that can scale with the services that you want to provide them is it automated so there's some platforms that are very intensive in terms of the little bells and whistles that you have to tweak that you have to type in every piece of data but we want to make sure that it's automated so that you don't have to keep replicating the same process over and over and over again you should be able to kind of set up a report have the data flow in and then be able to replicate that report for you over and over so if you if you want a you know a short-term forecast with this data and if you set that up that report up once and has the same data sources flowing in you should be able to just click start and that report generates you shouldn't have to set up the sources all again unless you change something but if the same sources are connected and the data is flowing and you already set the parameters once you shouldn't have to manually do that all again so you want to make sure the platform you're using is automated so that it's cutting out those manual tasks that you normally would have to do if you are using a spreadsheet and that doesn't offer what-if scenarios you know weather scenarios are very important piece of your cash flow forecasting puzzle because it helps you make confident business decisions this functionality is for financial occurrences that could that could maybe and possibly happen if they did this is what would happen to your cash flow so as a business owner these are things that are important to me because i want to see these three different types of pathways in the journey of my business and if you're able to provide those for me um it shows me hey you know what you're doing b um you know it it shows that you're providing real value to me because i can see the different based on the decisions i make these are three avenues that my business will go down and that that provides real value to that client and you know if i was a business it would it would be a big you know big value builder for me and the third thing is does it provide three-way forecasting three-way forecasting is also known as three financial statements are known as the three financial statements is a financial model combining three key reports into one consolidated financial consolidated forecast so this is great because it links your profit and loss your balance sheet and your cash flow projections together so that you can forecast future cash position and financial help so it takes those three key reports your income statement balance sheet and cash flow projection sheet and puts them into a health score and so you're taking all those complex things that a client gives you and are making it into an easy an easy create that the business owner can understand and that's so many times that's often your job is making complex numbers into a story by by easily allowing the client to see that from those those major reports they can see okay our financial health right now is a c we're going to work with you and these are the steps that we need to take in order to get it to a b in the next quarter um and these are the steps i recommend that you take it's it's great for you to be able to you know basically mark their grade and trend their grade with them and provide them the plan of how you're going to get there with them and if they take these steps with you that then they can trend that way and report it over time so i think it builds value for them because it's a report that they can understand but it's also a report important thing for you to be able to measure them and measure the steps that they take in order to reach those goals with you so i think it's it's really cool in that way so this is a cool little sprit checklist that you can use um if you would like a copy of this just email us at support receiptbank.com and we would be happy to provide this for you to use on your own as well and our last insight here is uh real-time accurate data is needed to improve cash show forecasting so i i feel like i'm going to keep saying this and i've said it a lot that you know real-time accurate data you know it won't take as long to output it it makes it so that you doesn't take as long to output effective forecasts because you're not waiting anymore for those shoe boxes of receipts to be manually entered into a spreadsheet then be put into your gl or your reporting system and then there is less steps in the process so you know and the experts that we surveyed say that time data are the two main necessities for better cash flow forecasting and that by far is the most important thing that you should learn in this is that if you're not getting real-time accurate data then you are not probably prepared to give forecasting um you know cash flow forecasting to your clients because it's not going to be as valuable to them as if you had those things in place you know for them so at the end of the day your forecast is only as good as the day that you enter into it so if you're give if you're putting in week old data into your forecast model then you know you're you can only expect weak old results into it so you can only provide them that kind of you know stale sales forecast and it's not going to be accurate for them and we as an advisor and that's a true partner to our clients they deserve the most up-to-date and accurate forecasts that we can give them so we need the best data from them we need them to give us the data as soon as it's available and there's tools that can allow us to do that and we'll get into that a little bit shortly but for for of cash flow projection tools to function properly and provide the most impactful insights the fault your software needs to have accurate sales expense data as well as transaction dates those are those are critical pieces to this so you need to have those things available to you you need to be integrated so you can pull that data into your forecasting tool cash flow forecasting relies on the collection of data data visibility clean data is vital in gaining a crystal clear cast position on that business and by plugging clean clean real-time data into a cash flow forecasting tool you can plan more accurately where a business will be in 30 days or even six months from now because of that of that real-time data so there's no guessing there's no well i think you know we we could be off by you know five to 30k here or there based on this um there's none of that um based on having the most accurate data from them and that and that is not only on you that's on to the that's up to the client as well they have to provide that data to you but by you know messing in to them the criticalness of having that data how vital it is for them to make available that data to you they will begin to understand that you are only as good to them as the data they provide to you and your systems are only as good to them as the data they provide to you so if they delay in getting that data to you then they cannot expect you to be as valuable to them as if that data was available to them or to you in real time and that's the biggest thing that i want to convey to you in this um so if they want monthly reporting then they need to have that data available to you you know before the end of the month if they want bi-weekly or a bi-monthly reporting then that data needs to be available to you as soon as possible by the end of the week and you need to set those slas with them that says the responsibilities of getting that data available or having the tools in place the technology tool in place where they can send in that data as soon as it becomes available and you can integrate with the platform so that data flows right into you but it's important to make sure that those responsibilities are put into place with both you and the client so they understand that you are only as good as the data that they provide to you um to make this work so like i said before in our agenda i i'd love to actually give real life examples of how people are thriving with this and how they actually put into practice um and we actually you know we provide an actual you know advocate who does this um so stuart hurt says director of at accounts and legal limited um and he actually you know what he says you know he believes that accurate financial data is act is the critical to creating a financial flow forecast and this is something like i said is is the keystone to to that forecast is having um the most accurate data available to you um because he knows this helps business owners sleep at night they're they're not double uh you know triple double guessing um the forecast you gave them because they know that you have available to you the most accurate data um so that forecast you gave them is going to be the most accurate one possible they're not double guessing you anymore um and he says as an accountant that's my reason for being is to give them that peace of mind um that they can go to bed at night and not have to think about all these different scenarios you've given them scenarios you've given them an outline that plan of what could happen in all three good bad and ugly scenarios because you have all the data
that they have you have all their banks their debts their credits you have all that information so you give them the most accurate timeline of what may happen uh in all three different scenarios which is important um and that's what he loves doing that's why he loves his job so what we did he's helped over a thousand clients um go cloud-based with their accounting and different technology that allows him to provide these insights so he's a true believer in this type of you know cloud or cloud forecasting uh uh for that very reason because he knows the impact it can have on small business and their clients so we asked a couple of questions that um we thought would be important in this conversation and the first one was how is the as an accountant does he ensure effective cash flow management for his clients uh and he says the first thing is that there has to be an education piece for the clients you have to try and demonstrate the value of the service and that and that is very important they're not just going to and we talked about that with the communication of it um you have to have them understand why you want to implement this within their business and the value behind it but he says that during coven 19 i think we've all experienced this is that it's made that conversation a lot easier to do um that many of the customers for the first time in his career are actually coming to him for support rather than him having to pitch the idea to them and i think it's because many businesses like i said like we've talked about are are looking to stay sustainable and they want more clarity into what they're into what their livelihood looks like and they're coming to him for ideas and so we can better inject that idea and or that methodology into into their process and they're open to technology now they're not as opposed to technology as they would have been 12 months ago because the status quo is broken the status quo is no more we're not in the old world anymore so they're open to these old ideas whether they be around cash flow forecasting or embracing tech accounting technology so this is the time to have those conversations um the second thing he says is that the data needs to be up to date um otherwise the cash flow is garbage as you can see in that quote he says this is the technical term for it um it's also not something that should be done as a one-of-a-kind uh one-time kind of thing he says it's super important that you do this continually to have any kind of value um you know it needs to be a routine thing whether you do it bi-monthly monthly quarterly it needs to have repeated you need to do it repeatedly so it builds value with the client so they can see the progression um of what you're doing and how it's impacting their business a one-time a one-off thing is not going to build value with them and then the third thing he says is that you want to make the most of tech so you want to utilize technology as best you can because it's going to save not only you time but it's going to allow you to provide the fastest most accurate forecast for that client and then he says there are many ways that you can help cash flow management um you know that you know accounts like him and firms like us can uh you know help with cash flow management by turning on more customer payment methods um such as online payments and direct debits as well as software to help with chasing debits um so that's different ways that's another way other than just cash flow forecasting um by getting integrating you know customer payment methods and getting access to online payments and their direct debits you can really help them manage their debt situation and really help them with that overall cash flow management issues um that can help them with those things and and analyzing what's going on in their actual business which i thought was very interesting um and then we asked them what role does real-time accurate financial data play in their cash flow management and forecasting process um he says it's it's critical it's the most critical piece of it um you know if you don't have the most definitive up-to-date list of customers who owe us uh you know as well as the bills that you know that need to be paid they could be miles off with the cash flow forecast so and he found it as you can see in the quote there and you probably find this with your own clients that it's alarming how many businesses still run blind um from their bank balance they don't know how much is in their chase account how much is in their bank of a bank of america because a they're probably scared to see how low the balance is how much how little money they have left and two it's just been depleted so much quicker than it was in the past just because they're throwing money left and right at all the different fires that are burning within their business unfortunately just because of like i said where we are as an economy um and so you know that day that phone call comes from chase that says hey your overdrafts that that's when they finally realize how low their business has gone um and so it's even easier than ever to keep up to date especially now with all the accounting tech available to us um that we can integrate ourselves into their business so that we can basically you know take the burden off of you know of them having to worry about it but we can take that cash flow management burden off of them and every time you know they don't pay a bill or every time someone doesn't pay um that's a thing of the past we can manage all those services for them and notify them and see it weeks or months ahead and make sure that that doesn't happen to them and that's the important part we can take that burn off them take that worry off of them as well um and then we ask them to give an example of clients where accurate data has been critical to financial planning especially during covid um he said it's really been huge this year because you know the sales tax so to speak got turned off when the lockdowns happen everyone's sales capacity went down by you know 50 75 some even went down to zero percent when when they couldn't even open you know hospitality especially um so having updated accurate data for for almost all these businesses has been literally life-saving because you know how low their productivity went to and where they actually lie in terms of how much longer they could stay afloat based on where they are um you know it's allowed them to calculate cash burn rates which is interesting so you can see basically what they can do to slow this rate down so whether it's um you know turning you know cutting off services that are losing that money that are hemorrhaging their money so things they thought maybe were making them money may actually be costing more to produce or more to keep on so analyzing all these things calculating that cash burn rate and seeing which areas of their business are actually losing that more money to keep on um and by turning them off that may actually save them three or four maybe five months of runway to stay open it also may be something where they can create different several financial models that's allowing them to basically give different scenarios to the clients such as what if they receive government support whether they received another pvp loan or financial aid um or if they pivoted to another sales channel and they got a confusion of cash that way how much longer could they survive or sustain um or even the worst case scenario but if they had to cut staff how long would that be allow them to stay afloat so with that information with that accurate information he's able to provide these you know in-depth scenarios of if you choose this option this is what happens if you you know choose this option of cutting staff this is what happens um so he's able to provide these kind of um you know sort of a variety of scenarios that can help that client get an accurate picture of what happens if i choose door number door a or door b or door c but i think that cash burn scenario of being able to calculate that so a business can actually see where they where are they wasting money because a lot of times it can be in our own lives we spend money on things that we may not realize our you know our our cable bill is actually 120 or we're spending money on you know uh another chart netflix and gone up to 20 maybe and we didn't realize we thought it was still six dollars so things like that things that we may not necessarily need in our own lives can be applied the same thing in business you're spending money on so many different things you don't realize how much it adds up especially when you're trying to pinch every penny to stay it's to stay you know sustainable so i think that was very interesting so our last section here is how a platform like receipt can help you with you know collecting extracting reconciling accurate data so that you can provide those real-time cash flow insights um and cash flow forecasting for your clients so with receipt bank it's truly really the best ways that you can get all your paperwork from your clients in one place sort it categorize it and ready it for reconciliation in the fraction of the time so there's no more like i said shoe boxes folders um manual data entry anymore it allows you to truly get away from the manual nature of your job so you really focus on the reporting advising partnership uh place in your job that that really a lot of people are moving to that advisory type role that many bookkeepers and accounts are moving to where they can really build value within their clients in that relationship you know it pulls all the data that you need from all bank statements invoices receipts um expense expenses all into a single dashboard so that you can see what's going on within that business and with your clients um so that you're you know make sure your clients are paying the right taxes a type of tax it automatically sets tax categories codes does currency conversions so if you have different types of um international clients or or ones that work in canada and mexico it can do all those things automatically for you so it takes away a lot of that manual nature but the best part isn't something we discussed before it integrates into your tech stack so if you already are using something like qbo with your clients or xero or gusto it builds into your existing tech stack and what we said is that's the important thing we don't want to expand our manual nature we want to eliminate things from our our day-to-day um and so that's why i illustrate this with many of our um with many of our clients and this is something a lot of our partners use is that we lay out many aspects of our practice we say okay what are we doing for payroll what is the platform that we use for payroll what is the thing we use to pay bills our general ledger our reporting uh software what are we doing to collect bills receives expenses and categorize and reconcile these things um you know and we want to make sure that we can automate as many of these processes as possible so this is a great thing that you can do yourself in your own firm and say how many of these processes are we automating today if we're not automating our bill collection receipt collection expense collection how can we do that and how if we are doing it today do all these platforms talk to each other and if we're not talking to each other how do we reduce how do we find ones that do talk to each other how can we reduce the time that we have spent we're spending typing one data into another platform because if you have tech that doesn't talk to each other you kind of might as well just be doing it manually at that point because you're spending the same amount of time so we want to make sure all these platforms like it shows with the arrows talk to each other and then this is just an example of how that works so the next example of what one of our clients use when our accounting firms use this where they have receipt bank in the front end to collect all those bank statements receipts invoices from their clients so they can those clients can just quickly scan the receipt uh email in a receipt take a picture of receipt or bank statement or invoice so it just goes from their phone right into that dashboard and reconciles it sorts it categorizes it matches it up with the bank statement automatically so it all gets accurately extracted and matched together and then that data can then uh feed into gusto and for your payroll online it can also go into build.com if you're using that for online bill pay it can then all together flow then into your uh gl or general ledger of choice whether that's qbo or xero so that can all then store there automatically as your general hub of all your financial documents and then if you're using already using a financial uh reporting software like fathom or in the future like xavier when it comes to the us all that data then can get consolidated for a one-stop shop for in-depth reporting so like i said recipe bank is your starting platform where you can all your data is captured all your receipts all that you know manual stuff captured that real-time data that we're talking about can then flow directly into your reporting software to give you that next step in reporting so you can provide those cash flow insights which is necessary and this just kind of lays it out for you so this is really about making you efficient to your clients you know financial insights make you truly indispensable to them we help you use your clients to provide financial insights advice and allow you to add additional services onto them and truly like i said make you invaluable to to your to your clients you can get assurances that your numbers are right see any business metric that you want across your whole client base as well and you're able to with receipt bank and with this kind of setup identify business opportunities and spot issues before they become costly problems so like i said it starts with the bookkeeping productivity at the top getting all that data in and then with different features by using our bank data match capabilities by getting all those things matched together with the bank fees with the uh feeds from all their different systems automatically coming answer you're matching all the data with the invoices and the bank statements that are coming in so it's all accurately matching together that can then allow you since it's all coming in in real time to provide those forecasting and advisory um uh reports that you need like i said you're not having to worry about is this data accurate is the date on time you know when it's coming in but you can also see if a document's not coming in with a bank feed statement you can then ping them and make sure that you get that statement from them you can see you know you can always make sure that if a document's missing that you can reach out to them and make sure that you get that document from them so that's why uh a platform like receive makes it easier to get forecasting data available to you in real time and then these are just a couple of features that help you like i said get more of that data to you quicker and more accurately so things like request paperwork like i mentioned so if you're missing a document you can set up automatic notifications to your clients that will ping them and notify them hey you need to send this invoice in on time or this expense report in on time um you know it'll ping their phone everyone has their phone on them nowadays every business owner um every you know every client of our accounts knows that they have their smartphone on them so it'll ping them until they send in that document for you so that you don't have to chase them down you don't have to call them you don't have to email them 20 times you'll ping them until they submit that document to you you can even chat with them on the device um like an in-app chat so they can see if they have any issues with it but you can make sure that that's that source document matches in with the fees that are coming into c bank automatically and like i said that automatic extraction when they scan in or they uh take a picture of that document that 99 accurate extraction will take all that data from
hose from those documents and put them right into receipting so that you don't have to worry about categorization or any you know tax codes any of that stuff it'll automatically extract that data for you so there's no need for you to have to mainly do it anymore which is great and then we also uh pull invoices from over 1400 suppliers so we take that out of you so that automatically categorizes those documents by supplier um and labels them individually if needed so it takes that off of your bank as well so you're getting all that data real time categorized sorted no more manual entry and then you can focus on just providing the services that they need including cash flow forecasting um it allows you to track client efficiency um even more so along with seeing you know what what lies ahead in that client's journey so with seeing the data in real time you're able to see okay i can tell that you know the burn rate is xyz it looks like that you know they're paying a little bit too much on this or these bills are out of date um they need to pay these asap they're running behind on this month's rent you can see all these things in real time with receipt bank but also gives the ability as a firm to see identify which clients may be costing more money to your service as well so it also allows you as this data is flowing in to see track the overall efficiency of your own firm and see if you're actually matching expectations of yourself and to see do you need to divert more of your company resources to certain clients versus other clients or are certain clients costing you more money than they're currently worth and how do you make that relationship with that particular client more efficient so it allows you to also perform almost your own cash flow forecasts on your own business plus you're able to see globally the efficiency of working with certain clients across your entire business and see which ones you need to make be become more efficient and which ones um are overly efficient that you can assign different resources off of into other parts of your business as well so it allows you to get more insights on your actual firm itself uh which is great too so you're not only building more value with your actual clients um but you're actually building more value within your actual firm and making sure that you're getting the most value for the services that you provide um and then lastly we create this great little what we call cash flow survival guide it's a great little ebook that i think is both great for firm owners firm staff as well as your clients because it gives them a background on what it actually means what a cash flow statement should look like a breakdown of the categories um what what that what information should be on it so i think it's a great guide that you could check out yourself but also something that you could you know reach out to your clients and say hey we were thinking about marketing these services doing some casual forecasting this could be like an introductory document that you sent to them to see if they're interested in it it could be like a little introduction getting their feet wet into this conversation about cash flow forecasting as a service um so if you're interested in learning more about this guide it's available for free on our website at receiptbank.com but if you would like us to send this to you just feel free to email us at support receiptbank.com once again that's support receiptbank.com and we're happy to send you this guide so that you can share it amongst your clients or just internally check out all the information that's on it many of which that we covered today in the presentation and then if you're interested in learning more about receipt bank and how we can help you extract that data that accurate real-time data so that you can get more into uh the uh cash flow forecasting as a service part of your business because like we said we know many people are still using excel or kind of outdated tools to manually do this stuff but if you want something that can integrate to your existing tech stack or general ledger receipt bank's a great intro tool so if you want to learn more we're happy to set you up with a free demo so just email us at support receipt bank.com we're happy to run you through a quick 15-minute demo of the platform so you can learn more see if it's the right fit for both you and your clients um and see if it's going to be a benefit and and get you get your feet wet once again in in doing forecasting uh as a service for your clients uh and then if there's any overall questions of what we uh presented today if you would like any of the checklists that we went through today uh the technology checklist um or any of the guides any of the slides we went through today please feel free once again to email us right there on the screen at support receivbank.com and we're happy to provide you anything that you saw here today or help you out within the information that we went over and share some of the research that we found from our accounting partners as well but once again i want to thank you all for your time today it's been a pleasure uh to share some of the insight that we got from our accounting community um i love when we could take the insights that we get from our own accounting partners that are just like you even even if you're not a receipt bank user um i love that with the community we build and share it with the outside uh community especially ma macpa which is a great community in itself um so thank you all again for having us a part of this for taking the time to uh watch this presentation um if you have any questions whatsoever i believe we'll be also sending these the slide deck to you all so reach out if you have any questions on it but i hope you enjoyed i hope you have a great rest your day and your week and take care everyone bye-bye
