The Dreaded Statement of Cash Flows

How you can automatically generate an actual Statement of Cash Flows regardless of what ERP software you use

‍Those who have experienced the manual preparation of a Statement of Cash Flows using beginning and period end Balance Sheets plus a periodic Income Statement know that this can be a chore and can cause a little confusion along the way with figuring out how to place the different numbers in the designated sections of this statement.Fundamentally, the preparation of a Statement of Cash Flows is not that complicated and you would expect all accounting and ERP software vendors to provide a working template with each installation. Many of the software solutions targeted at the small to medium size companies not only do not provide such a template but are not capable of programming this statement and as such, a Statement of Cash Flows is not available to users of these software packages. The result is that a Statement of Cash Flows is not produced in many small and even medium size organizations.Many companies that are required to submit a periodic Statement of Cash Flows, either because they are SEC filers or their lender asks for it, must produce this statement manually for each required period.I’ve talked to several ERP software vendors and their typical response was that their GL software was not designed to automatically produce a Statement of Cash Flows because there is no way to tag each GL account with the proper treatment for this statement (i.e., how to use each specific GL account activity or changing balance in the compilation of this statement). This confirms that users of these vendors’ software have to perform this chore manually; that is, if they care to do it at all.I’ve devised a way to automatically produce an accurate and complete Statement of Cash Flows, in each required period, regardless of what ERP software is used and whether or not its GL can accommodate this statement. To do that I use Budget Maestro which is a planning, budgeting and analysis software, primarily designed for small and medium companies in a variety of industries, where actual and budgeted financial statements and various reports can be generated in almost real time from available actual accounting and operations data and existing budget and forecasting data.Budget Maestro was designed to produce all three major financial statements: An Income Statement, a Balance Sheet and a Statement of Cash Flows for every period included in every version of the budget implemented at the company and consolidated across all business entities that make up the organization.As such, these financial statements are also available in a special version of the data known as Actual Plan. Here, actual accounting data (e.g., period-end Trial Balance) populate this Actual Plan through an export from the ERP GL or via a direct link available for several of the more popular SMB ERP software.If you transfer your closed period (e.g., month) GL account balances into the Actual Plan in Budget Maestro (something you really need to do to be able to perform analysis of Budget vs. Actual), you will automatically gain access to all three financial statements (plus many other reports you can set up in the system). The actual Statement of Cash Flows will automatically be generated and available to publish. It will be complete and accurate and you will have the choice between using the Direct Method or the Indirect Method.The secret to accomplishing this in Budget Maestro is careful planning of the chart of accounts and reporting format. This should closely match the setup of your actual GL and its reporting hierarchy. From that point on it is only a matter of periodically performing the data transfer and updating Budget Maestro with any changes to the chart of accounts as they occur in the ERP GL.Existing and new users of Budget Maestro now have a viable and practical option to generate an actual period Statement of  Cash Flows. This should no longer be a mystery to many accounting and finance managers and depriving company executives of vital information about the financial performance of their organizations should no longer exist.  Furthermore, by using Budget Maestro as an all-encompassing budget solution, The Benefits of an All-Encompassing Budget, company managements can finally gain real insight into the future financial health of their organizations.Businesses of every description rely on the Budget Maestro™ family of software solutions by Centage Corporation to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business budgeting and planning, financial forecasting, financial consolidation and reporting processes. For more information, take a tour of Budget Maestro, contact Centage, or call 800-366-5111 now.