Cash forecast

Cash flow is critical to any business. Even profitable companies can face insolvency if they don't maintain the cash flow to meet immediate needs. The cash flow forecasting capability in Finance insights can help companies monitor and manage their cash balances effectively. This feature uses machine learning to help businesses forecast cash flows more accurately than they have previously. It can also help managers make decisions that optimize opportunities in the context of their current cash position.

For most companies, managing cash flow and running cash flow forecasting is a tedious, repetitive, and manual process. Most companies rely on Microsoft Excel solutions that have varying degrees of complexity. The challenges of accurately forecasting cash flow include the following points:

• Data isn't available to decision makers because it's scattered in multiple places, including:
  • The accounting or enterprise resource planning system
  • Financial planning software
  • Excel
  • Additional software applications
• Forecasting is based on internal knowledge that resides in "silos" within each domain or department.
• Measuring the accuracy of cash flow forecasting after the financials have been realized is uncertain and difficult.

Details of the Cash flow forecasts capability

The Cash flow forecasts feature includes the following functionality.

• Introduces intelligent cash flow forecasting for long-term forecasting, using time series forecasting through automated integration with AI Builder.

• Lets you save specific cash flow position or forecasts, edit them, and then easily compare and measure the forecast performance to the actual financials.

• Enables what-if analysis through snapshot comparison. For example, you can create multiple snapshots that represent optimistic, pessimistic, and the most realistic views of your cash flow, and then compare and view the differences.

• Lets you view the cash flow forecast in multiple currencies, across legal entities, and filter and view cash flow related to a bank account.

• Lets you filter and view bank accounts that are related to financial dimensions.

The cash flow forecasting functionality in Dynamics 365 Finance will empower your organization to transform tedious, complex, yet repetitive cash flow projection to a simple, automated process. Automating the most tedious aspects of cash flow forecasting lets you focus on critical decision making to drive desired business outcomes.