Cash flow forecasting for manufacturers
Material and labor go out months before the invoice clears. Arclite reads your QuickBooks Online ledger, shows the thirteen weeks in front of you, and chases the money sitting in orders that already shipped.
You pay for the order long before it pays you.
Steel, resin, boards and castings get bought on a lead time. Your people run the job. The truck leaves, the invoice goes out, and only then does net 60 start counting. Your suppliers wanted paying weeks ago.
A big order digs the hole deeper before it fills it.
The purchase order everybody celebrates is a bill you pay first. Raw material, overtime, outside plating and freight all land months ahead of the payment. Win two large ones in the same quarter and the best backlog you have ever had is also the tightest cash you have ever run.
- The terms run the wrong wayYou buy on 30 and sell on 60. That difference is the whole business, and you fund it out of your own account.
- Cash is sitting on the floorRaw material, work in process and finished goods waiting on a ship date are all money you already spent.
- Deposits do not cover itA deposit takes the edge off the material buy. It does not carry the labor, the tooling or the freight.
It all runs off one 13-week cash flow forecast built from the invoices and bills already in your ledger.
Built around the cash you have tied up.
- Customers timed to their historyEvery open invoice lands on the week that customer has actually paid you, not the week the PO says.
- Supplier terms in the same viewMaterial bills, outside processing and freight sit on the weeks they are really due, next to the money coming in.
- The week an order turnsSee where a job stops taking cash out and starts putting it back, before you commit to the next one.
- Shipped and unpaid, chasedDelivered, invoiced, nothing back. Arclite ranks them by what they do to your tightest week and drafts the follow-up.
- Payroll and notes stay fixedShop payroll, equipment notes and lease payments go in as the fixed outflows they are.
- Nothing sends without youEvery reminder waits for your approval, and so does anything Arclite posts back to QuickBooks Online.
The money in the gap is partly yours already. Arclite ranks and drafts the follow-ups so you can collect on orders that already shipped without building a chase list by hand.
Live before the next material buy.
1. Connect QuickBooks Online
One connection. About five minutes, no data entry.
2. Arclite reads the ledger
Open invoices, supplier bills, balances, and how every customer has actually paid you.
3. Thirteen weeks appear
Week by week, with the tight week marked and the orders and bills behind it named.
4. Buy on a week that carries it
Chase what shipped and has not paid. Time the material buy for a week with room in it.
The order you cannot afford to win.
Capacity is not the only thing that decides whether you take a job. Cash decides it too, and it decides it earlier. The quote goes out months before the payment comes back.
Know what the next order costs you before the deposit clears.
Material at today's price, overtime to hit the date, freight both ways, and a customer on sixty days. All of it is knowable. Put it against the thirteen weeks and taking the work becomes a decision instead of a hope.
- Weeks of runwayOne number for how long you can run the shop at the current pace with nothing new landing.
- Collect firstSome of the gap is money already earned, sitting in orders that shipped and nobody followed up on.
- Ask before you commitBeans answers from your own ledger. Can I carry the material buy if the Delgado order pays two weeks late.
We publish what we find on how late customers pay by industry, so you can check your own receivables against the numbers.
Questions from shop owners.
Not as inventory, and it does not pretend to. It is not an MRP or an ERP and it will not count parts for you. It handles the cash side: the supplier bills you have taken on, the week each one is due, and what is coming in against them. If the question is what a material buy does to week seven, that is the question it answers.
On the week they land, as cash in. A deposit invoice in QuickBooks Online is an invoice like any other, and Arclite times it to when that customer has actually paid deposits before. What the forecast will not do is let the deposit hide the rest of the job. The labor, the outside processing and the freight still show up on their own weeks, because that is when they cost you.
Yes. Every customer gets a payment profile built from your own history with them. If one has taken 88 days on the last dozen invoices, Arclite times the next one to 88 days rather than to the term printed on the purchase order. The customers who pay on time are modeled paying on time. Nothing is timed to a date you both know is fiction.
It shows you the part that is usually missing, which is what each week actually looks like. You will see the weeks that can carry a large bill and the weeks that cannot, with what is due and what is expected in sitting next to them. Price and lead time may still decide the buy for you. At least you will know what the timing costs.
No. Arclite integrates directly with QuickBooks Online and reads from it. It does not do scheduling, routing, bills of material or shop floor control, and it does not replace your ERP. It does the one thing an ERP does badly: thirteen weeks of real cash, built from actual invoices and bills, and the follow-ups that change it.
Know the week before you commit the material.
Connect QuickBooks Online and Arclite builds thirteen weeks from your open invoices and supplier bills. Nothing to import, nothing to maintain.
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