Business Plan Pro Tip: Tracking Inventory
If your business needs to track inventory, either raw materials or goods you resell, it will affect your cash flow. Usually, you will have to pay up-front to buy your inventory, but not see any cash back in until you sell it. Fortunately, Business Plan Pro can do all the inventory purchase calculations automatically, so you’ll know when you have to buy more inventory, and whether you have enough cash in the bank to buy it.
To take advantage of this feature, you’ll need to follow two simple steps:
1. Table settings
First, make sure that your table settings include Standard financials that plan cash flow better, not Cash-basis financials. They should also be set for “Yes, I manage inventory.” You can customize how many months of inventory you keep on-hand in the same settings. In Business Plan Pro 11.0, you can access these table settings from the Cash Flow or Balance Sheet tables.
2. Inventory costs
Then, just make sure that the Direct Cost of Sales or Cost of Goods section of your Sales Forecast table (the second half of the table) lists only inventory costs, not labor or commissions. (If you have other direct/variable costs, you can list them at the top of the Profit and Loss table.)
That’s it. The software will do the rest.
Want more detail?
A special behind-the-scenes table, called Inventory Detail, uses calculations based on your settings and tables to automatically plan for restocking inventory, and makes sure your Cash Flow and Balance Sheet reflect your inventory position. This table doesn’t normally print with your plan, but you can open it by pointing to Tables on the View menu, to get a sense of how often you will have to restock your inventory. You can also search for “Inventory” in your Help to learn more about this table and cash flow planning in general.
No comments yet.