Software · Management information systems
Planning and Liquidity
Project, optionally with operation · 4 to 10 weeks
- The situation
- The plan lives in an Excel file that one person understands. It is fed by hand every month, drifts off after three weeks, and nobody knows exactly which assumption explains the variance.
- What we deliver
- We connect the plan to open items and accounting data, build scenarios with transparent drivers, and set up the plan-vs-actual comparison so that variances can be traced back to an assumption.
- How you measure success
- Forecast accuracy over 13 weeks, time spent on the monthly update, number of people who can operate the plan.
Why Excel breaks here first
A liquidity plan is not a calculation problem but a data problem. The formulas in the workbook are usually correct. What is wrong is that the inputs come in by hand: open items, the payment behavior of major customers, recurring payments, tax deadlines. Each of these values ages at a different rate, and the workbook doesn’t notice.
The structure
- 13 weeks rolling, based on open items, payment history, and due dates
- Twelve months indicative, from the P&L plan, translated into cash via payment terms
- Scenarios using a few named drivers, not a second file
- Plan vs. actual weekly, with each variance traced to an assumption
What we don’t do
We don’t build a plan that only runs in our hands. If, at the end, nobody in the organization can change the drivers, the project was pointless. The handover is part of the work, not an appendix — or we take over operation explicitly.