What are some best practices or tips for improving CFO and CFI for your own business or clients?

When applying these techniques to the nonprofit environment it’s necessary to modify the calculation for the spend-down of donor restricted contributions that were received in prior fiscal periods. While net cash flow is negative it is already covered by an existing net asset balance with donor restrictions and is actually cash-flow neutral considering the complete gift activity.Similarly, collecting restricted gifts to be spent in future periods can provide a false positive CFO result. The most important internal control to ensure that cash from such gifts is being appropriately held until spent pursuant to donor stipulations is to calculate the “expected” balance of such cash and reconcile to the GL regularly.

Certainly, a positive Cash Flow from Operations (CFO) is promising. However, we must also consider other metrics like Profit Margin and Current Ratio to get a complete financial picture.

A negative CFO doesn't necessarily signify a negative outcome. In fact, a negative CFO is preferable to having zero CFO, as it suggests that your business is still operational.

El CFO de una cia, consiste en agrupar aquellos flujos (ingresos y egresos) que tienen vinculación con la propia operativa del negocio, esto es los ingresos por las ventas, menos los egresos por los pagos a proveedores del ciclo normal del negocio (no capex), sueldos, alquileres, y otros gastos operativos, e impuestos. Un CFO>0 es deseable. Un CFO<0 es una se?al de que algo no anda bien, aunque si el negocio está creciendo, tiene zafralidad, u otros motivos puede ser perfectamente normal, incluso tener resultados positivos, con CFO<0. La frase Cash is king refiere a esto también.

Enhancing the financial health of your organization requires a strategic approach to both CFO and CFI functions. One effective tactic is to meticulously analyze cash flow patterns, identifying areas of improvement and potential risks. Additionally, fostering transparent communication between departments can streamline processes and optimize resource allocation. Embracing technology solutions tailored to your business's needs can also enhance efficiency and accuracy in financial reporting. Lastly, staying abreast of industry trends and regulatory changes ensures proactive decision-making and fosters long-term sustainability.

While CFI reflects how an entity allocates investments for future purposes it does not provide meaningful insight into the allocation itself. Nonprofits have already and elegantly addressed this in their accounting and financial reporting practices for board-designated net assets, and most especially endowments. Nonprofits are by necessity masterful at the thoughtful deployment of scarce resources in an environment where there is never enough funding and the act of balancing the desire to meet todays exigent needs while.preserving a sustainable enterprise for future mission impact is an annual existential exercise. Hopefully the more enlightened leaders of for profits will take this gift of a cue.

évaluez soigneusement les projets d'investissement pour un rendement optimal. Diversifiez les sources de financement pour minimiser les risques. Gérez la dette avec prudence pour éviter un endettement excessif. Planifiez financièrement à long terme, anticipez les besoins en liquidités. En suivant ces conseils, vous influencerez positivement le CFI, assurant une gestion habile des flux de trésorerie liés aux investissements pour une croissance durable.

While the direct method does indeed take more time, the benefit of deriving data such as cash collected from customers by segment and other dimensions by performing a detailed direct method allows for some really exciting insights into how well the various business models employed are working. Taking the extra time to sort out this level of detail provides exceptionally high return on the effort by delivering actionable business intelligence to allow for greater surgical precision when making resource allocation decisions. If your efforts can’t yield data at the right level of detail to drive business (and charitable) outcomes. why bother?

Working capital management is extremely important. Compare the cost of manufacturing/trading/rendering services (including the costs to sell and other ancillary cost elements) with the revenues earned. Good way is to measure on cost-price per unit basis. Get on to breakeven if you are in loss, through increase in your price (don't miss on delivering quality) and cut down any possible high costs. Additional Capex should be checked for ROCE and only if sustainable (considering if outside funding available) then can be incurred. Companies lack on better cost pricing and revisions coupled with delivering high end performance to compete in the market with desired margins.

As mentioned, having a negative cash flow from investing activities is not necessarily a bad thing for a business. The more pertinent question is: are we investing in the right things? Questions that should be asked prior to moving forward with an investment include: 1. Does the investment align with the company's mission, vision, and values? 2. Have we evaluated all the risks of the investment and created a mitigation plan for high-priority risks? 3. Will the ROI on the investment be greater than our WACC? Compare multiple investment opportunities, and be sure to evaluate comparable financial metrics (e.g. NPV, Payback period, ROI) as well as qualitative characteristics in order to conclude which investment(s) should be pursued.