Strategies and tools to improve business cash flow analysis and spend management

Summary: Better cash flow management helps navigate uncertainty 

Tariffs, inflation, and geopolitical tensions create a potent brew of economic uncertainty. Unfortunately, you cannot control these external factors, but there’s a counterweight you can control: your own business cash flow analysis and cash flow management. 

Cash flow is called the “lifeblood of business,” because it allows your organization to:  

• Pay suppliers, employers, and other bills on time.  
• Depend less on debt, ensure better rates when you do borrow, and build reserves and resilience.  
• Seize opportunities and weather the kind of economic uncertainty we’re experiencing now. 

The consequences of cash crunches and inadequate cash flow management range from a lack of agility – something every organization needs more of now – to bankruptcy. An oft-cited statistic illustrates the stakes, attributing 82% of all small business shutdowns to poor cash flow.  

Finance leaders know that improving your cash flow management and financial forecasting requires taking steps to bring more money into the business and paying less out, while keeping as much cash on hand as possible. That requires boosting your ability to see and control business expenses with strategy and spend management software, with the added benefits of efficiency and productivity. 

Read and explore: 

• Why seeing your real-time spend data and spend analytics is key to improving business cash flow analysis. 
• Specific approaches to strengthen cash flow management, including steps involving pricing, cost-cutting, and value-added tax (VAT) refunds. 
• How integrated spend management software can boost visibility by capturing travel spend and other expenses, improving compliance and enabling better cash flow management and financial forecasting. 

Can data visibility and spend analytics improve cash flow analysis and financial forecasting? 

Bringing all your spending data together in one place is essential to better manage your business cash flow and enhance cash flow forecasting.  

As visibility into spending and receivables improves, so does cash flow analysis and the flexibility to ride out disruptions. Manual processes and disconnected technology for travel, expense, and invoice management hinder visibility because they’re slower and less accurate. 

Using centralized spend management software integrated with your ERP and other systems allows you to enhance your cash flow management by: 

• Achieving greater precision and insights to cut costs and negotiate supplier discounts. 
• Enabling quick adjustments to policies and spending as conditions demand. 
• Improving decision-making because all the information is on hand for cash flow analysis. 
• Capturing all expenses and travel bookings including supplier-direct ones, limiting surprises. 
• Preserving resources by ensuring purchases occur at the best prices. 
• Allowing managers to approve spending before it occurs and to stay on top of budgets in near-real time

How can I enhance business cash flow analysis and cash flow management? 

With a clear view of spend analytics and expected business cash flow, specific steps can ensure your organization has the most money possible on hand to provide a volatility buffer and empower opportunities. 

Some steps naturally involve limiting what the business pays for goods and services. Others hone the timing at the heart of cash flow management. Yet others add to cash flow by finding new sources of revenue, such as increasing VAT refunds. 

Raising prices is one approach to counter the impact of tariffs – whether confirmed or in progress – with many organizations already having taken this step. And cutting non-fixed costs is an obvious strategy. With variable expenses like raw materials or travel, you may find ways to quickly institute reductions but still must weigh tradeoffs, like the downsides of not tending to current clients or seeking new business face to face.  

Fixed expenses required a longer-term approach. The business can seek less-expensive office space but cannot cheaply escape a lease. Labor is typically a company’s largest expense, but quickly cutting employees can be disruptive in the short term and set you back in the long term. Through a combination of strategic planning and natural attrition, some businesses may consider shifting to gig workers and other on-demand labor. 

Other ways to improve your business cash flow include: 

• Send invoices right away, because you can’t manage cash you haven’t requested. 
• Offer discounts to customers and suppliers who pay early, at rates that balance good fiscal sense and improved cash flow analysis. 
• Negotiate better rates from your suppliers, now that business spend management software is providing information and financial forecasting to use as leverage. 
• Scrutinize inventory for slow-moving products and opportunities to reduce carrying costs. 
• Institute payment plans, such as requiring deposits for longer-term projects or staging payments instead of waiting until all work is done. 
• Hold onto your cash until due dates are near, overcoming the tendency to pay bills as they arrive. 
• Add cash to cash flow with VAT refunds, an often-onerous task simplified by solutions that ensure compliance and reduce risk. 

How to improve cash flow: Top tips for finance leaders 

Learn 7 ways to strengthen cash flow management and analysis and gain the insights and resiliency to navigate economic uncertainty.  

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How does technology help improve cash flow analysis and financial forecasting? 

Many AP teams methodically comb through PDFs, email, and paper invoices for details. Organizations don’t bother to find purchases eligible for VAT refunds because the process is too complex and time-consuming. Travelers book directly with suppliers, so costs don’t appear until the expense report arrives weeks later, obscuring business cash flow. Expenses are paid with an employee’s personal credit card instead of a company card and submitted in a future expense report, so timely spend analytics and data are lacking to round out financial forecasting.  

These are just a few examples of how manual, disjointed processes and tools limit spending visibility, speed, and agility while complicating cash flow management and forecasting. Spend management software integrated with your ERP can clear the view. 

 Centralized business spend management should include: 

• A travel management platform that captures all bookings and trip costs, while guiding employees to compliant choices and automatically applying policy adjustments. 
• A request tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate trip costs and lets managers assess purchases before money is spent, improving control and their view of business cash flow. 
• An automatic mileage tracker that uses GPS to improve accuracy and avoid unnecessary costs. 
• Expense tools that streamline the creation, submittal, and approval of expense reports so employees won’t delay the process. Consider solutions that offer a mobile app, for example, that allows travelers to snap a picture of their receipt, then automatically itemizes details before funneling the entries to expense reports.  
• AI embedded across solutions that check every transaction, boosting compliance and helping ensure that businesses know where all their money is and where it’s going. 
• Dashboards and reporting tools that let finance teams and business unit managers see spend analytics and make informed decisions. 
• An AI-fueled VAT management tool that finds eligible expenses, ensures compliance, supplies expertise many businesses lack, and adds to the bottom line. 
• Integration with ERP, accounting, and other systems so near-real time cash flow analysis is possible, and the organization can spot trends and strengthen financial forecasting. 

Many finance leaders are frustrated by their business spend management solutions, with 59% saying in our CFO Insights Report that they suffer from a lack of data visibility and 46% lamenting a lack of integration. They also are readily aware of the challenges the world around us bring to their organizations, with 41% calling worsening economic conditions their top external challenge – a finding that came just ahead of tariff spikes that roiled markets, business plans, and forecasts.  

But unlike geopolitical tensions, a strategic approach to cash flow management and financial forecasting – executed with the help of centralized spend management – is something businesses can control amid economic uncertainty.