Playing the Numbers

Sometimes, you just want to play around with different ideas. What if I switched suppliers, and could arrange payment terms for net 45 instead of net 30? Or what would happen if we finished off the attic space so we could store more inventory up there?

The Premier Edition of Business Plan Pro has a neat little feature called the Cash Pilot for testing out these scenarios with all of your plan financials taken into account:

• On the plan toolbar, click Cash Pilot.
• The bottom section is your Control Panel: click in the boxes and type (or adjust numbers up and down with the arrow keys) to change your assumptions for:
  • Months of Inventory On-hand
  • Minimum Inventory Purchase
  • Collection Period
  • Sales on Credit %
  • Payment Delay

The left side shows your Planned Cash (your plan’s current numbers). The right side shows Adjusted Cash (what happens to your Cash Balance and Net Cash Flow with the new assumptions):

Go ahead, test out your ideas, and see what happens to your plan. If you like what you see, just close the Cash Pilot to apply the new numbers to your plan. If your tests show these changes would put you in the red, click Reset All (in the lower right corner) to go back to your original projections.

Posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 11:00 am within Business Plan Pro. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.