Year End Rollover

Your SurvivalWare data file (.MTX) holds a limited amount of historical data.  At the end of each year, there is a process you go through called a “Rollover” to archive the oldest 12 months of data, and make room for the new year.

 
The time to do the rollover is when you are ready to load [...]

Doing Projections in SurvivalWare – Part 5: Other Cash Flow

This is part 5 of a 5 part series on how to create a cash flow projection using SurvivalWare and the generic financial model that comes with it. 

Getting familiar with the Forecast Tool
Sales and Expenses
Debt Service and Investment
Working Capital
Other Cash Flow

 Other Cash Flow
 
What happens in a financial projection model is that you use various techniques [...]

Doing Projections in SurvivalWare – Part 4: Working Capital

Fluctuations in Working Capital can be the source of a major disconnect between profits and cash flow. This article covers how to analyze what has happened in the past, and how to use that knowledge to forecast Working Capital in the future.

Doing Projections in SurvivalWare – Part 3: Debt Service and Investment

Two key components of  your cash flow are 1) what happens to your debt (new borrowings, repayments, interest) and 2) spending money on stuff that doesn’t show up on the income statement right away  (Investment / Capital Expenditures).
 
This is part 3 of a 5 part series on how to create a cash flow projection using [...]

Doing Projections in SurvivalWare – Part 2: Sales and Expenses

The first step in putting together a complete financial projection is to forecast Sales and Expenses.
 
This is part 2 of a 5 part series on how to create a cash flow projection using SurvivalWare and the generic financial model that comes with it.
 

Getting familiar with the Forecast Tool
Sales and Expenses
Debt Service and Investment
Working Capital
Other Cash [...]

Doing Projections in SurvivalWare – Part 1: the Forecast Tool

This is a 5 part series of articles covering the fundamentals of doing financial projections using SurvivalWare and the generic financial model that comes with it.
 

Getting familiar with the Forecast Tool
Sales and Expenses
Debt Service and Investment
Working Capital
Other Cash Flow

Part 1 – getting familiar with the Forecast Tool
 
Intro
 
The Forecast Tool is designed to help you verbalize [...]

How to guide – using the SurvivalWare Cash Planner

 
Let’s continue with the same set of assumptions from the Excel spreadsheet, but this time using the SurvivalWare Cash Planner.     
Step 1 – enter the current cash balance.  And also define the planning horizon with the ending date of the first period, and the number of periods, and their units (days, weeks, months).  
 
Step 2 – enter [...]

Tech Note – Setting up a new company in SurvivalWare

One thing nice about being a small software company is that you can make design decisions quickly without having to get approval or communicate with other departments.
 
This is especially nice during the “home stretch” phase just before release of a product when you are trying to develop the help files and documentation to explain how [...]

Tech Note: Company Selector

Warning: I have my programmer’s hat on.  Language may not be suitable for non-techies.
 
8 a.m. Saturday morning.  I’ve spent the last hour and a half trying to track down a bug in the “Add New” option of the Company Selector.  This is on top of the last hour and a half of the workday yesterday.  [...]

Fast Paced Financial Analysis

I have a client who relies on me for general business advice, and who likes for me to look at the books at the close of each month.  His controller sends me two CSV files exported from Quickbooks – one with the Standard Income Statement and the other with the Standard Balance Sheet report – [...]