Pay on time, never early
Arclite reads every open bill in QuickBooks Online, ranks it against the week you are actually tight, and tells you what to pay now and what can wait. You still pay them. It just stops being a guess.
Paying early is a loan you did not mean to make.
Most small businesses pay bills in a batch. Friday comes, somebody opens the pile, and everything in it goes out. Half of that money did not need to leave for three more weeks, and it left in the same week you were watching the balance.
The pile does not know which week is tight.
Sorting payables by date tells you what arrived first. It does not tell you what happens if one of them waits. A $215 office supply invoice and a $24,000 payroll run are not the same decision, and neither are two identical invoices when one lands in a week with room and one lands in the week you are short.
- Early is expensiveCash that leaves three weeks early is cash you did not have during the three weeks you needed it.
- Late is expensive tooFees, finance charges, a vendor who tightens your terms, a lapsed policy. The pile causes both failures.
- Nobody ranks itThere is no moment in the week where somebody sits down and decides the order. So the order is whatever the pile was.
A pay list with reasons attached.
- Every bill on its real due datePulled from QuickBooks Online and placed on the day it is actually due, not the day it arrived.
- Ranked against your tight weekThe order comes from your forecast, so the bill that breaks week five outranks the one that is merely older.
- Pay now or holdEach bill carries a call and the reason behind it. Hold is a decision, not an oversight.
- Discounts worth takingTwo ten net thirty is about 36 percent annualized. Arclite flags the ones that beat holding the cash.
- Consequences, not just datesPayroll, rent, insurance and notes rank on what happens if they slip. A supplier invoice does not.
- Arclite never pays anythingNothing posts to QuickBooks without your approval, and no money moves without you doing it yourself.
Read, rank, pay.
1. Arclite reads your payables
Open bills, amounts, due dates, vendors and terms. One connection, and nothing posts back without approval.
2. The list ranks itself
Each bill is scored against its due date, its consequence and what it does to your tightest week.
3. You get a pay-now list
What goes this week, what holds, and what the hold costs you if anything. Every call shows its reason.
4. The forecast moves with it
Hold a bill a week and the weeks change in front of you, so you can see the decision before you make it.
Ranking your bills only means something if you know which week is short, which is what the 13-week cash flow forecast is for. The two run off the same ledger.
When to pay early anyway.
Pay on time is the rule, not a religion. Sometimes paying early is the best return available to you, and sometimes stretching a vendor by a week is free. The trick is knowing which one you are looking at.
Two ten net thirty is a 36 percent return, until it is not.
Taking a two percent discount to pay twenty days early works out to about thirty-six percent annualized. Almost nothing else you can do with that cash beats it. But if paying early puts week five under, you have borrowed from the week that mattered to earn a return in the week that did not. Arclite shows you both sides before you decide.
- The discount math, doneArclite flags the discounts worth taking and the ones that cost more than they pay.
- What a hold actually costsA late fee, a finance charge, a relationship, or nothing at all. The number sits next to the bill.
- Test it before you do itAsk Beans what happens if you hold the material buy a week, and the thirteen weeks redraw around the answer.
Bills are half the picture. The other half is money coming in, which is what collecting overdue invoicesis for. Ranking both against the same forecast is the whole point.
Questions about bills.
No. It does not move money and it does not hold an account. It reads your payables and tells you the order. You pay the way you already pay, through your bank or your bill pay tool. If Arclite could move money on its own, a ranking mistake would become a wire, and that is not a tradeoff worth making for a list.
Three things. What the bill actually costs you if it is late, when it is genuinely due rather than when it landed, and what paying it this week does to your tightest week. Payroll, rent, insurance and notes have consequences you cannot negotiate, so they rank hard regardless. A supplier invoice with no late fee and a long relationship behind it ranks differently, and Arclite says which is which rather than sorting your payables by date.
They get counted. Two percent for paying twenty days early is worth roughly thirty-six percent annualized, which is more than almost anything else you could do with that cash, so Arclite flags the ones worth taking. It also flags the ones that are not: if taking the discount puts you under in week five, the discount is not a discount, it is a loan you took from yourself at a bad rate.
The opposite. Most owners pay in batches, which means half the pile goes out weeks early and the other half goes out after somebody notices. Arclite separates the two. Paying on the due date is not paying late, it is paying on time, and the cash stays in your account until the day it is supposed to leave. Nothing in the ranking ever recommends blowing a due date.
Arclite cannot stop an autopay, because it is a standing instruction between you and that vendor. What it can do is model it honestly. A recurring charge goes into the forecast as a fixed outflow on the day it actually hits, so the weeks around it are right. If you have a lot on autopay, the useful thing is usually seeing how much of your week is already spoken for before you get a say.
Stop paying three weeks early.
Connect QuickBooks Online and Arclite ranks every open bill against the week you are actually tight. Nothing to import, nothing to maintain.
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