What used to be seen as a back-office task, cash flow management is now a key driver of business success. Cash flow management can help organizations maintain liquidity, fund growth, and navigate economic uncertainty. Whether you’re addressing seasonal revenue cycles, integrating newly acquired entities, or scaling operations, you need a clear view of your cash position to make timely, informed decisions.
Instances where cash flow management becomes critical include:
- Post-transaction integration: Confirming newly acquired entities have sufficient working capital and aligned reporting structures
- Seasonal or cyclical industries: Managing cash reserves during low-revenue periods
- Growth planning: Funding expansion without overleveraging
- Crisis response: Maintaining solvency during economic downturns or supply chain disruptions
Cash Management Defined
Cash management is more than just balancing a checkbook. It can encompass everything from monitoring daily balances to planning for future obligations and opportunities. Effective cash management can help your organization meet its short-term liabilities while positioning itself for long-term growth.
Four key components of cash management include:
- Cash visibility: Knowing how much cash is available across accounts in real time
- Forecasting: Projecting future inflows and outflows to anticipate needs
- Liquidity planning: Keeping sufficient cash on hand to cover payroll, vendor payments, and debt obligations
- Strategic allocation: Using excess cash to support investments, growth initiatives, or other high-priority objectives
Cash flow management with NetSuite can be enhanced through the Cash 360 SuiteApp, which offers a dashboard-based interface integrated with NetSuite’s core data. It can give you real-time visibility into your cash position, help simplify bank reconciliation, and support accurate forecasting by incorporating historical data along with configurable projections. As a managed SuiteApp, it is regularly updated with new features and enhancements.
For assistance tailoring Cash 360 to your organization’s needs, the NetSuite team at Forvis Mazars can help you configure dashboards, highlight trends, and align scenario planning with your broader business goals. This support can help you surface potential risks, strengthen financial oversight, and decisively align your cash position and strategy.
Cash management is the foundation of financial resilience. Visibility, control, and strategy are key.
Understanding Cash Flow Mechanics
To understand how cash can move through an organization, it’s important to look at how cash flow is measured and reported.
Cash flow statements are key for assessing financial health, and how they’re prepared can influence the insights they provide. There are two primary methods for presenting cash flows from operating activities:
- Direct method: This approach reports actual cash transactions, such as customer payments and vendor disbursements. It offers a clear view of cash movement but requires detailed tracking of cash inflows and outflows.
- Indirect method: More commonly used, this method starts with net income and adjusts for non-cash items like depreciation and changes in working capital. It reflects accrual-based accounting and helps reconcile net income with actual cash flow.
In addition, understanding how changes in balance sheet accounts affect cash flow is critical:
- Accounts receivable: An increase in accounts receivable reflects higher credit sales, which can constrain cash flow since the cash has not yet been received.
- Inventory: Rising inventory levels often signal cash outflows for materials or goods. Conversely, a reduction in inventory can indicate cash recovery, especially if the inventory was previously purchased with cash.
These nuances are critical when forecasting cash needs or gauging operational efficiency. NetSuite’s financial tools can help automate these calculations and provide visibility into how operational decisions may affect cash flow.
With this foundation in place, let’s explore five areas where a modern approach to cash flow management can be applied using NetSuite.
Improving Accuracy Through Accrual Accounting & Faster Closes
Transitioning from cash-based to accrual-based accounting is a common challenge, particularly for organizations in private equity and government contracting. This shift is essential for aligning financial reporting with U.S. GAAP standards and improving forecasting accuracy.
To support a smooth transition, organizations can:
- Establish clear policies for recognizing revenue and expenses under accrual accounting
- Standardize monthly close procedures to reduce cycle time and improve accuracy
- Develop 100-day integration plans that align financial reporting with parent company expectations
NetSuite can enable this transformation through:
- Automated journal entries and accruals
- Real-time financial reporting
- Integrated modules that streamline the monthly close
- Revenue Essentials, a feature set for automating revenue recognition in compliance with Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606, is ideal for organizations with straightforward revenue models or those beginning their compliance journey
- Advanced Revenue Management (ARM) extends the Revenue Essentials feature set to include advanced process areas such as fair market valuation of services, enabling compliance with ASC 606. It supports end-to-end automation of the order-to-cash process, reducing manual effort and enhancing audit readiness
- Banking integrations that can automate reconciliations and provide real-time visibility into cash positions, accelerating the close process
NetSuite’s ARM module and banking integrations can work in tandem to help automate accruals, streamline reconciliations, and reduce close cycles—giving finance teams more time to focus on strategy.
Strengthening Liquidity & Working Capital Planning
Maintaining liquidity is a persistent concern, especially in industries with seasonal revenue or economic volatility. Companies need to be able to anticipate cash shortfalls and adjust spending or financing strategies accordingly.
Common practices include:
- Building dynamic cash flow models that reflect operational realities
- Creating rolling budgets and forecasts to track performance against expectations
- Using scenario planning to gauge the impact of market shifts or internal decisions
NetSuite can support these efforts with:
- Forecasting tools that model inflows and outflows
- Dashboards that monitor receivables, payables, and inventory
- Scenario planning capabilities for stress testing assumptions
NetSuite’s forecasting tools can help organizations anticipate shortfalls and make proactive decisions.
Scaling Financial Systems for Growth
Legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems can limit visibility into cash flow and hinder operational efficiency. As businesses grow, they often require systems that can scale with complexity and support real-time decision making.
Modernization efforts typically focus on:
- Integrating financial data across departments to reduce silos
- Improving payment processing and reconciliation workflows
- Aligning system capabilities with strategic growth goals
NetSuite’s native cloud architecture offers:
- Real-time dashboards and reporting
- Scalable infrastructure that supports multi-entity operations
- Seamless updates and integrations without cost-prohibitive customizations
Modern ERP systems like NetSuite can unlock agility and control for growing enterprises.
Managing Inventory & Restricted Resources
For sectors like agribusiness and independent schools, managing inventory and restricted resources is essential to maintaining healthy cash flow. Excess inventory or underutilized funds can tie up capital and reduce flexibility.
Organizations can improve resource use by:
- Implementing demand planning and inventory tracking systems
- Automating reorder points to avoid overstocking
- Reviewing fund restrictions and aligning allocations with program goals
NetSuite can aid these efforts through:
- Real-time inventory management
- Funding accounting tools for nonprofits and schools
- Analytics that highlight inefficiencies and opportunities
Aligning Cash Flow With Strategic Governance
Aligning cash flow with long-term strategy needs more than operational oversight—it requires governance structures that support informed decision making and accountability.
Best practices include:
- Developing board-level reporting packages that highlight key financial metrics
- Facilitating strategic planning sessions to align financial and operational goals
- Conducting feasibility studies and long-range projections to ascertain growth opportunities
NetSuite can help support this with:
- Customizable dashboards for key performance and financial metrics
- Integrated planning tools for scenario modeling and forecasting
- Reporting capabilities that support governance and transparency
A Unified Approach to Financial Transformation
A modern approach to cash management combines smart technology and strategic vision. NetSuite can provide the infrastructure for real-time visibility and automation, while consultants can help you interpret data and guide strategic pursuits. As your organization prepares for the future, the ability to monitor, protect, and strategically manage cash flow will be an effective tool, helping you unlock sustainable, long-term growth.
Ready to transform your financial operations? Connect with the NetSuite team at Forvis Mazars to learn how our consultants can help you leverage NetSuite for strong cash flow management and long-term success.
Forvis Mazars is a certified Oracle NetSuite partner offering software implementation, integration, and consulting services, in addition to two premier program options:
- NetSuite Solution Provider – Helping your business get up and running with its own suite of NetSuite modules
- NetSuite Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) – Helping fast-growing startups and small and midsize organizations supercharge their business management with outsourcing services
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