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Simply-Does-IT FlowStream

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Many businesses have to contend with a roller-coaster ride in their cash flow planning. Invest too little and you lose sales, invest too much and you risk insolvency. Where is the best balance…. that is the question! FlowStream uses two concurrently operating calendars enabling the system to make long and short term forecasts from the same dataset, whilst periodic rollovers and forecast generation is completely automatic; so that you’re always looking at the latest view of income, expenditure and cash availability. NetSuite roles, permissions and security are used throughout. FlowStream is a ‘Native NetSuite’ development that adds accurate cash flow planning to NetSuite financial accounting including daily, weekly, monthly and annual income and expenditure forecasts. It’s been developed for manufacturers with long delivery lead times, distribution companies with extended supply chains, businesses with lumpy income or expenditure streams, start-ups with high ‘cash burn’ rates, and those organisations with high susceptibility to business cycles and seasonality patterns. Tight integration with NetSuite balances and transactions is achieved using continuous background processing and data synchronisation. Drill down to each NetSuite originating transaction is available throughout.

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Description

Automation with High Accuracy

Cash Flow is ‘King’ in Manufacturing and Distribution businesses.
The timing mismatch between the time to deliver to customers and the order lead times available from suppliers can be many months; – during which time there may be significant changes in economic circumstances, seasonality patterns to contend with, overseas trade disruptions, supply-side logistical costs, changes in rates of exchange or duty, and various other bottlenecks have to be overcome.
By taking as much existing information about NetSuite debtors, creditors, banks, sales invoices, bills and orders as is available. By adding future “flow stream forecasts”  FlowStream is able to give dynamic and accurate forecasts of your future business prospects that take into account such variables as cost inflation, business risk. efficiency measures and growth. And that’s all within your familiar NetSuite accounting environment.

Forecasts include ‘Expected’ and ‘Worst Case’ forecasts, which take into account growth rates, inflation rates, efficiency targets and business risk across all segments.

Key Benefits

FlowStream is self-populating from customer and vendor transactions which are seamlessly merged with flow forecasts for repeating income, standing charges, loans, capital costs and operating costs.
All this data is available instantly – on a single click – for the next 14 days by day, and the next 13 weeks by week in easy to understand views.
FlowStream longer-term planning is automatically done using sales and purchase order payment date predictions and by using statistical modelling to forecast up to 5 years ahead.
Always up to date: Refreshing the underlying data is achieved through a combination of daily calendar control, automated date filtering, background synchronisation with NetSuite and spreadsheet-style list editing by users.
Time and Cost Savings:
FlowStream allows you to dispense with those quickly outdated, costly, difficult to manage and intrinsically inaccurate spreadsheets that you may now depend on.
FlowStream is fully automatic, working on the same principles as car navigation, you’ll know (financially) where you are, where you are going and which decisions to take.

Target Users

– Chief Operating Officers and Business Managers: A reliable single-source-of-information that’s based on the latest daily forecast data.
– CFOs Treasurers and Financial Controllers.
Daily, weekly and monthly cash flow planning based on live transactions, direct bank payments and predicted payment dates.
– Investors: Long term 5-year cash flow forecasts based on rolling monthly reporting cycles.

Because FlowStream runs automatically with a minimum of clerical effort the target users are those who ‘Read’ the forecasts, not the traditional type of user who pumps lots of manually collected data into spreadsheets. The main outputs are NetSuite Dashboard based, and these views can be deployed on many other users’ dashboards.

FEATURES

NetSuite Based Development Environment

NetSuite tools have been used for the entire system development.
The user interface is the same so there's no need for any extra staff training for existing users.
Banks and currencies used are the same as in the NetSuite G/L
Analysis grouping is the same as the NetSuite dimensions of Project, Location, Department and Class.
Customisation possibilities and methods are exactly the same.
FlowStream is Group or Company based in accordance with NetSuite data architecture and uses the same user permission and sign-on security.

Flow Stream Forecasts

FlowStream uses AI-type algorithmic analysis technology to generate forecasts based on actual historical data combined with existing transactions, using preset 'rules'.
For example seasonality can be applied to the current month forecast which reflects what happened in the same month one year ago. The same pattern analysis applies to every month in the forecast.
Other factors considered are:
- The average days to pay (sales) and the the credit days taken (purchases),
- The cut-off day for merging estimates with actual transactions to avoid double-counting.

Sales and Cost 'Flow Streams'.
Income & Expenditure is reported at the "classic" accounting levels of Income; Gross Margin; Operating Costs; Administration Costs; Financial Costs; Taxation; Net Profits; and Capital Flows.
- Each Flow Stream can be 'sliced' into many elements such as sales by subsidiary, sales by account manager / territory, sales by division or product group, and so on.
- Cost Flow Streams are built to reflect the key cost centres in a business, by controllable costs, non-controllable costs, and recurring costs (such as employment costs).

Liquidity Status Levels

All forecasts are made up from the following 'Status Levels':
Paid - made up of payment / receipt transactions made in an opening week or month in a forecast.
Invoiced - open items in the A/R and A/P ledgers.
Ordered - Open Sales and Purchase Orders which have not yet been invoiced or billed.
Flow Streams - forecasts made by the system based on statistical data or on templates.
Capital - forecasts made by the system based on templates for loans and capital expenditure.

Payment Date Accuracy

Opening Bank Balances are based on the latest bank  balance read every night from your NetSuite G/L.
The Forecast Payment Dates for Sales Invoices and Bills are based on open transactions in the NetSuite ledgers and predicted on any of Due Date, Average Days To Pay or Days Overdue as specified on each customer record.
The Forecast Payment Dates for Sales and Purchase Orders include lead times for Days to Deliver and Days to Receive. Importation Costs are predicted where appropriate, and vitally important for export and import forecast dates.
Flow Stream Forecasts which are automatically regenerated each month use weekly, monthly, and annual frequencies to predict long term inflows and outflows.
All the forecast data used is held in a single record type-  the Forecast Entry Table. Due dates are as specified on the transaction.record, and the forecast payment date is a prediction made and updated on a daily basis based on prevailing factors on that day. Forecast Payment Dates can be modified at any time by users and are not then overridden until they expire.
A Debt Collection Status  is applied to every invoice transaction, normally set to 'Good', with the option of further settings applied by a credit controller, which allow the inclusion or exclusion of a transaction in the forecast.

Proof of Concept & Facility Management

A Proof of Concept process is available to existing users of NetSuite that allows a no obligation 3 month trial period prior to the purchase of a full licence to use. This period is used to install and implement Liquidity Manager on to your Account. At the end of the trial you will have a fully operational forecasting system ready for handover to your staff.

Even though FlowStream is virtually automatic high level treasury reporting is critical. Facility Management is an available option for those companies where the existing accounting load is too heavy to produce timely figures.