We develop a payment calendar in MS Excel. What is a business payment calendar and why is it needed? Payment calendar includes

A.K. Nesterov Payment calendar // Encyclopedia of the Nesterovs

The payment calendar details the current financial plan for a certain period and provides information about the organization's cash flow.

Drawing up a payment calendar

In order to improve the efficiency of internal financial discipline, the payment calendar is used in tabular form, it contains all receipts and payments of the enterprise for the period. The period is determined by the internal policy of the enterprise, depending on the tasks set. Possible periods: 1 year, 6 months, 3 months.

The annual period is used in cases where a half-year detailing is not necessary due to the relatively small number of business transactions. A three-month period is more suitable for targeted projects and short-term programs. The most common practice in modern conditions is the use of semi-annual detailing.

The payment calendar is compiled for a specified period with a breakdown of data by month. As the initial data, the internal payment schedules for contracts are used, which reflect the timing of payments, as well as the schedules of periodic payments.

The payment calendar should be designed in such a way that the amount of receipts is not less than the expected expenses. The general rule in this case is the following: If receipts exceed payments, the balance of money is shown, which means the company's solvency, otherwise the organization will not be able to pay off its obligations.

By its very nature, the payment calendar is the main tool for budgeting the expenses of an enterprise. Let's consider the general procedure for compiling a payment calendar. First of all, all regular payments and receipts are recorded in the calendar: loan settlements, advance payments, regular settlements with counterparties. The rest of the planned payments are distributed taking into account the planned receipts. As part of this, the organization uses a simple irregular payment request form. Such applications are signed by the heads of departments of the enterprise, after which they are transferred to the financial department. The finance department coordinates all payment requests in such a way that the company does not face a volume of payments greater than the company can pay in a particular month.

In this way, a violation of the balance of income and expenses is not allowed: if the amount of payments on applications does not exceed receipts, then the amounts are included in the payment calendar; if not, then the applications are forwarded for approval to the head of the finance department, who decides whether this payment will be made or not. If necessary, the finance department may request a documentary justification for the need to make a payment if it relates to unplanned requests or is made in excess of the established limit of expenses.

Thus, the general procedure for compiling a payment calendar is reduced to the following operations:

• a draft payment calendar is drawn up,
• a comparison of the planned expenses and receipts is carried out,
• in case of inconsistencies, the payment calendar is optimized to comply with the principle of exceeding receipts over expenditures.

Sample payment calendar project

An example of a draft payment calendar for a half-year period is presented in the table

Based on the results of comparing the amounts of receipts and expenditures of funds, the excess of payments over receipts should have negative values ​​throughout the entire period, and the excess of receipts over payments should be positive. Most often, for the period as a whole, the enterprise retains its solvency, but in some months it is not able to pay off its obligations, and the imbalance in the payment calendar is caused by the excess of the amounts of possible expenses. This situation is illustrated by an example of a payment calendar.

The draft payment calendar, being the original version of the document, quite often turns out to be unbalanced.

The main problem is the lack of a balanced ratio between receipts from sold batches of products and the timing of payment of invoices from suppliers. To eliminate this imbalance, work is underway to optimize the company's payment calendar.

In practice, the most common case is a situation when the rate of supply, outstripping the rate of sales volumes, leads to an increase in the amount of expenses, which exceeds the amount of proceeds from the company's core activities.

In general, maintaining financial discipline boils down to revising the payment calendar to exclude from it dates in which expenses exceed receipts. The reason is that you need to plan and some circumstances, for example, you cannot completely rely on the timely payment of invoices by the company's counterparties, since an unsatisfactory situation may arise, and the company’s current account at the beginning of the month will not have the required amount.

Optimization of the payment calendar

Optimization of the payment calendar relies on several basic tricks:

• to lay down part of the costs in the budget for a later period;
• divide a large payment into several parts in order to distribute it between several periods;
• achieve preferential terms of supply, for example, use a commercial loan;
• settlement using alternative methods, for example, a bill of exchange;
• conversion of means of payment, for example, the sale of a bill of exchange allows you to receive funds to the current account to pay off payments;
• to carry out additional short-term bank lending to the company, while, however, one should take into account the increase in interest payments and repayment of the loan in future periods.

Considering the above methods used by enterprises in the practice of economic activity, it should be noted that the first three methods are the least painful for the company, since they do not lead to an increase in the volume of payments and cause an increase in the company's expenses. The fourth and fifth methods are primarily associated with organizational difficulties, so they are less attractive when optimizing the payment calendar. Finally, short-term bank lending increases the company's costs and is undesirable for a successful business. Therefore, resort to the last technique should only be in the most extreme cases.

Considering the above example of a payment calendar project, we can conclude that it is necessary to optimize it, for which we will use the first technique. To do this, part of payments to suppliers should be transferred from July, August and October to September and November. As a result of the optimization, we will create a new payment calendar.

An example of an optimized project of a payment calendar for a half-year period is presented in the table

If, after optimizing the payment calendar throughout the entire period, the excess of payments over receipts has negative values, and the excess of receipts over payments is positive, this allows us to conclude that the company is in a satisfactory position in terms of economic efficiency. This situation means that in any period the company will be able to pay off its obligations at the expense of receipts from the main activity.

Expenses management within the planned budget of expenses in accordance with the payment calendar should be carried out through the daily control by the financial department of the list and the amounts of expenses planned for the next date.

If the company does not have enough funds to pay all bills on a certain day, part of the planned payments should be postponed to other days. In accordance with this, if necessary, the payment calendar should also be recalculated. In the event of a discrepancy in the recalculated payment calendar, it should be optimized using the techniques discussed above.

In order to maintain the effectiveness of internal financial discipline, it is also recommended that the final version of the payment calendar be approved by the head of the finance department with the management of the enterprise.

The payment calendar is an important tool for the effective management of the company's funds. Most often it is formed in Excel. Read how to create a payment calendar and save yourself an example in Excel.

A CFO seeking to increase the value of the company cannot ignore the payment calendar, since it is a risk-free way to earn additional funds, strengthen financial discipline and identify problem areas in the structure of money turnover.

Why do you need a payment calendar

The payment calendar in Excel is the main tool in the operational financial planning system. It helps to solve, first of all, the following important tasks:

• forecasting cash gaps: allows you to reduce the amount of borrowed funds or develop measures to restore the required level of liquidity without attracting external funding.
• maximization of interest income: receive an additional several percent from the placement of temporarily free funds in a short-term deposit instead of accruing interest on the balance.
• analysis of payment discipline of buyers / debtors: identification of unreliable payers through regular monitoring of deferred receipts.

How to Automate a Payment Calendar Using Excel

Download the Excel model to automate all the work on maintaining and filling the payment calendar, as well as the register of payments. Medium-sized companies may need minor adjustments, such as changes in the composition of receipts and disposals. For large enterprises, the model will be useful as a prototype of the future module for managing current payments of an integrated information system.

How to create a payment calendar in Excel. Example

Before creating a payment calendar, you need to take two key steps to develop the structure of the template: define the data entry format and develop an interface for comfortable monitoring. This requires two worksheets.

Sheet "Database"

To minimize the number of random errors (typos), you should capture data as separate operations with a unique set of analytics. The standard set for management accounting purposes consists of 10 analysts:

• cash flow - receipt or payment (see also,);
• Date of operation;
• sum;
• operation item;

• article code;
• comment (explanation / decoding in free form);
• counterparty;
• chapter (a large accounting section to which the operation belongs);
• project;
• Center for Financial Responsibility (CFR) .

The specified set of fields can be easily supplemented if necessary (contract number, VAT, invoice, initiator and others).

Similar operations are added by simple copying and minor adjustments (date, amount, counterparty). The values ​​of all dimensions (except for the "Amount", "Comment" fields) are limited to lists to avoid duplicate names. And in the case of the name "Articles" and "Code of the article", they are linked through the function "VLOOKUP". Thus, adding a new operation takes only a few seconds. Filters are set in the header of the table with the name of the analyst, which allows you to select several analysts and form the required data array (Fig. 1).

Picture 1... An example of a database for a payment calendar (click to enlarge)

Liquidity forecast sheet

The "Database" sheet, with all its versatility with a wide range of information, is only an excellent assistant in the structure of the payment calendar, an example of which we are examining. The main role is assigned to the liquidity forecast graph (Fig. 2). Visually, this is a standard cash flow statement, but with a time step of one day. Each operation from the database finds its place in the liquidity forecast matrix. Data transfer is carried out through the "SUMIFS" formula with the specified parameters for the article code and date. Thus, any new operation is automatically reflected in the chart, while the situation is excluded when data is not transmitted due to input errors - in this model there are no such problems, since key analysts are set through lists, which means that any operation will find its place on liquidity chart.

Figure 2... An example of drawing up a forecast of liquidity in a payment calendar

Horizon and frequency of formation of the payment calendar in Excel

The proposed sample payment calendar in Excel may go beyond the usual planning horizon of one month, since the order of entry allows you to identify any transaction. It is quite acceptable to carry out monitoring up to a quarter, but in this case there is a significant dependence of the forecast quality on the planning principles in force at the enterprise. In a situation where an organization has a process of systematic updating of planned data in all Central Federal District, a quarterly long liquidity horizon can be of high quality and useful for making managerial decisions.

The frequency of formation may differ - depending on the purpose of the payment calendar in the financial management system of the company, but the data must be updated at least once a week, otherwise the information content and relevance of the forecast will decrease to the level of a standard execution report.

How to monitor billing calendar fixes using Excel

If several people maintain a payment calendar in Excel, a special change log will help you track their edits. Thanks to him, you will be able to control:

• who made the edits - username (account);
• what was fixed - the address of the changed cell, sheet;
• as corrected - the value of the cell before and after the change;
• when - date and time of revisions.

In addition, the change log can be hidden from prying eyes.

What to consider when creating a payment calendar

A significant drawback of the payment calendar is the impossibility (limited ability) of multi-user access. Unfortunately, today there is no technical solution to fix this problem. However, this barrier is successfully overcome by transferring the authority to maintain the calendar in the hands of an experienced employee of the planning and economic department or treasury. The advantages of this approach are obvious: the presence of a single user of the system will reduce the number of errors to a minimum level, although it will take up a significant proportion of working time.

In contrast to the budget campaign, when each center of financial responsibility forms its own plan once a year and corrects it on a quarterly basis, the payment calendar requires regular updates - weekly or more often). Formalized collection of information from all CFDs can be difficult, so economists must be deeply immersed in the situation with the turnover of funds in all directions.

Receipts

Forecasting incoming cash flows from sales is by far the hardest part of the job. With a large number of small stable clients, it is possible to use the simplest estimation method - the arithmetic mean, when the planned volume of receipts for several periods is divided by the number of periods. The data can be updated using a number of indirect factors (seasonality, industry / market dynamics, the impact of the current stage of the company / strategy life cycle). Planning accuracy becomes more difficult when there are several large clients. In this situation, you should use the method of expert judgment. Its essence lies in the fact that for each amount, the probability of its receipt in three scenarios (conservative, optimistic, pessimistic) is determined and then a weighted average is derived, taking into account the specific share of each scenario.

Payments

Determination of the date of many payments is carried out without the participation of the initiators of the payment. Empirical data is useful, especially from well-known and long-standing suppliers. In addition, regular monitoring of deadlines for payments under existing contracts will be a good addition (initiators of payments have a strong habit of specifying payment dates earlier than the allowable deadline for the contract). The same goes for paying taxes. It can be a good practice to pay some bills a few days after the deadline. Such small tricks often go unnoticed by the counterparty, but you should not use such tactics in relation to key suppliers.

Assessing the quality of planning in a payment calendar

Measuring the effectiveness of any planning document is carried out by assessing the quality of forecasting. The billing calendar is no exception. set the maximum target indicator of deviation of the fact from the plan, depending on the specifics of the business, the frequency of updating the report and the planning horizon. In the case of a payment calendar in Excel, an example of which we have analyzed, it should be noted that regularly exceeding the deviation rate will reduce the usefulness of such a document to a minimum, which means the company will not earn a few additional interest.

In practice, it often happens that the same CFDs are guilty of inaccuracy. One of the options for dealing with weak "planners" may be the introduction of regular analytical reports for senior management, which will assess the lost resources due to poor planning of individual CFDs. Another way to motivate employees responsible for the execution of budgets can be fixing the permissible deviations in the map of key performance indicators to determine the amount of the employee's annual (quarterly) bonus.

The role of the payment calendar in the management accounting system

A high-quality payment calendar rightfully occupies a central position in the company's management accounting system. Undoubtedly, the comprehensive use of this universal tool allows you to expand the boundaries of the classical designation for monitoring liquidity problems. A logical continuation of the given vector for the formation of the structure will be the automatic preparation of the plan-fact report of the BDDS. To do this, you just need to enter the block of the plan for the movement of money on the schedule (for a month or for a quarter) and group the fact data up to the same period. In addition, as the database grows, another powerful tool for control and analysis is formed - the most flexible matrix of all monetary transactions of the enterprise with a high degree of data reliability.

Attached files

• An example of a valid calendar in Excel.xlsx

To control the implementation of planned financial indicators, the receipt and rational use of funds during the year, the company uses operational financial plans that complement current planning.

With the help of operational financial plans, the enterprise determines the amount of financial resources to ensure current production and financial activities, establishes the sequence and timing of individual financial transactions, taking into account the most effective maneuvering of its own and borrowed funds, carries out operational control over the implementation of plans and obligations for the volume of production and sales of products , profits, payments to the budget, deductions to the supplying authorities, settlements with the institution of the bank.

Operational financial planning includes drawing up:

Payment calendar;

Cash plan;

Calculating the need for a short-term loan.

Payment schedule is the basis for organizing operational financial work at the enterprise. This document reflects in detail the operational cash flow through the settlement, current, currency, loan and other accounts of the enterprise. The receipt and expenditure of funds is planned in a specific sequence in terms of time, which makes it possible to timely make settlements, transfer payments to the budget and extra-budgetary funds.

The payment calendar is drawn up for the next month with a more detailed breakdown of the information contained in it for short periods of time (as a rule, for 15, 10, 5 days). The timing of the preparation of the payment calendar is determined based on the frequency of the main payments of the enterprise. It is most advisable to draw up monthly plans with a ten-day breakdown. The payment calendar covers all expenses and receipts of funds of the enterprise both in cash and in non-cash form, including relations with the budgetary system and banks.

Drawing up a payment calendar begins with its expenditure side, which reflects all the company's urgent payment obligations. Operational financial planning consists in establishing such a ratio between income and expenses, which would ensure their equality or even some excess of income and receipts over expenses and deductions. Such a possible excess will indicate the company's solvency in the future. If there is a shortage in means of payment, then the priority of payments should be revised, the plan for shipment of products should be adjusted, measures should be taken to accelerate settlements and find additional funds.

The payment calendar allows you to control the spending of funds in case of financial difficulties. With its help, the indicators of the current financial plan are clarified, the execution of cost estimates, production and sales, and the financial results of the enterprise are monitored.

Cash plan- This is a plan for the turnover of cash of the enterprise, which is necessary to control their receipt and expenditure. It is developed to plan the turnover of cash for a quarter and is submitted to a bank institution with which the company has an agreement on settlement and cash services.

The cash plan ensures timely receipt of cash at the bank and control over its use. At the same time, a standard for the balance of cash at the cash desk (limits) is introduced, which, if necessary, can be revised. Cash in excess of the established limits must be handed over to the banks serving the company.

The company needs a cash plan in order to represent the amount of payments as accurately as possible. Correct drawing up of a cash plan allows you to ensure strict control over the movement of cash, its timely receipt and intended use.

Calculations of the need for a short-term loan are drawn up by the enterprise if it has a need for a short-term loan, and presented to the bank in accordance with its demand, after which a loan agreement is concluded. However, this must be preceded by a reasonable calculation of the size of the loan, as well as the amount that, taking into account the interest, must be returned to the bank. The effectiveness of the credited event or the expected proceeds from the sale of products should ensure timely repayment of the loan and exclude penalties.

Budgeting is a very effective tool for managing the activities of an enterprise, but unfortunately it is very often ignored or given insufficient attention. Although it is precisely this that is the basis of effective financial management of the enterprise, and the larger the company, the more important this moment is. We will not tell you all about budgeting now, but will focus on the moment of planning cash flow and drawing up a BDDS.

Cash flow budget

Cash flow budget (BDM)- the budget (plan) of the current account and cash flow at the cash desk of the enterprise or its structural unit, reflecting all the projected receipts and withdrawals of funds as a result of the economic activity of the enterprise.

To run a business effectively, an enterprise in the present and in the future needs to have a positive cash balance, otherwise it simply won't be able to function. That is why BDDS is given a dominant place in the budgeting system.

The BDDS should provide for measures against so-called “cash gaps”, i.e. situations associated with a lack of funds for current payments (as measures can be bank loans, issue of shares or other fundraising). Temporarily free funds can be sent, for example, to investment projects, bank deposits at interest, etc.

The cash flow budget is usually based on the income and expenditure budget (BDR) and the investment budget. However, it will not work to draw it up on the basis of their indicators, since a different principle is embedded in their formation.

The budget of income and expenses is formed according to (i.e. income and expenses are determined at the time when they were actually incurred, regardless of payment), the cash flow budget - according to the "cash" method (i.e. income and expenses must be not only committed, but also paid). In addition, there are budget items of income and expenses that are not related to cash flows (for example, depreciation, marriage, shortages), as well as there are cash flow items that are not related to the current turnover of capital and investment activities (loans and borrowings).

The cash flow budget (BDBS) is drawn up on the basis of the current status of payments, concluded contracts, signed contracts and actual obligations. At the same time, it is necessary to remember about the need to form a balance that can be spent on unforeseen expenses, which all enterprises like to have, regardless of the type of activity.

Effective cash flow planning capabilities depend on the planning period. Long-term (a year or more) and medium-term (quarter, year) BDDS can practically coincide with BDR. The longer the planning period, the closer the BDDS is to the BDR. When switching to short-term (operational) planning, it is not possible to take as a basis the BDR adjusted for the same period due to the strong susceptibility of the cash flow process to random influences that are almost impossible to foresee at the stage of preparing the BDR, such as: fluctuations in the timing and amount of payment, conditions and volumes of supplies. In addition, data on the value of expenditures in the BDR are usually approximate, created on the basis of standard (accounting) prices for raw materials and materials.

The application-contractual methodology for the formation of the BDDS is shown in the figure

When planning cash receipts the calculation of the estimated cash inflows is carried out on the basis of the available planned income data for the given period and the possible repayment of accounts receivable by buyers.

The calculation of receipts is carried out taking into account the established practice of relationships with customers. To do this, using, for example, statistical methods, an analysis of the current activities of the enterprise is carried out and the following indicators are determined:

maturity dates of receivables;

the percentage of advances received from the total amount of products (goods) sold;

terms from the receipt of advances to the fulfillment of the relevant obligations by the enterprise;

the percentage of "bad" debts in the total share of invoices presented to buyers.

The calculation of these indicators is carried out for each type of activity in the context of groups of counterparties. For this, you can use the accounting database of the company.

After calculating the total amount of planned receipts, the maximum possible amount of payments for the period is determined:

Payments = Balance of start + Receipts - Balance of end - Reserve, where

Balance start- the actual (in the absence of such data - the planned) balance of funds at the beginning of the planning period;

Balance con- the planned balance of funds at the end of the planning period;

Reserve- cash reserve for unplanned, emergency payments.

Planning cash payments carried out on the basis of approved applications and contracts (block 2 in the figure). Within the framework of this methodology, it is supposed to create a database of contracts, in which all financial and business contracts concluded with the enterprise are registered. For planning cash payments on the basis of one-time relationships with counterparties that are not formalized by contracts, a document is intended application(The approximate format of the tabular part of the application is shown in the table below). The application is drawn up by the division for expenses for current activities. A prerequisite for the application is the presence of documentary evidence of each line of expenses (invoice, certificate, production plan).

Application format table

The frequency with which applications are drawn up corresponds to the frequency of budget planning. When using several plans of different intervals, the preparation of applications is made for each period.

Upon receipt of applications for all structural divisions of the Enterprise, an analysis of the received data is carried out. Drawing up a schedule for the payment of funds is carried out in two stages:

determination of the purpose of payments;

determination of payment dates.

At the first stage, after determining the maximum amount of payments (Payments), the selection of the most priority items of payments is made. If the maximum amount of payments is not enough to cover their most priority (obligatory) items, then it is concluded that it is necessary to obtain a loan, a loan in the amount necessary to pay these costs. Credits and loans increase the receipts of the Enterprise for the planned period, but increase payments for the following periods.

At the second stage, the dates of payments are determined. For this, a cash flow schedule is drawn up, on the basis of which the cash balance for each planning step is determined (the minimum, indivisible planning period - for example, a day, a week, etc.).

Table "Form of the plan-calendar of cash flow"

Initially, the terms of the most priority items of payments are determined based on the required terms of payment and the capabilities of the Enterprise to fulfill these obligations. Further, payment terms are determined for the rest of the items, starting with the highest priority items, and ending with less priority ones. At the same time, cash gaps are monitored, i.e. absence of periods with negative balances at the beginning, end of the period.

In addition, the amount of payments by item is formed taking into account the limits on expenditures for each unit, established on the basis of the planned MDR and the investment budget (block 3 in the figure). If payments are reasonable and necessary, a decision is made to make adjustments to the BDR and the investment budget.

After the selection of articles and the determination of the terms of payments, the columns of the subdivisions' applications are filled in, confirming the payment of the selected articles within a certain time frame in the planned amount and quantity. The table below shows the columns of the tabular part of the application, filled in by the person responsible for determining the timing and items of payments.

table

Applications with approved deadlines and payment items are returned to the department heads. When forming applications for the next period, the heads of divisions have the right to re-indicate in the application the articles that did not pass (did not receive confirmation of payment) in the previous periods.
On the basis of the report on approved applications (schedule for payments), as well as the schedule for the receipt of funds, a payment calendar is formed, and on the basis of the latter - BDDS.

An important aspect of the proposed methodology, along with the compilation technology, is the organization of planning work. The methodology for the formation of BDDS should be part of the regulation on planning at the enterprise (be enshrined in internal regulatory documents) and be mandatory for all departments.

Requests for the period are grouped, and displayed in the form of a report by divisions, are presented to the head responsible for the expenditure of funds. The report is analyzed according to the priority of applications, by item of expenditure, by type of activity, and for each line of the application, the amount and date of payment for the applications are entered. Unapproved applications must be submitted in the next month along with new applications.

When organizing planning, it is necessary to provide for control operations:

compliance of BDDS articles with limits (determined by the BDR and the investment budget);

the feasibility of the costs incurred and cost overruns (comparison with the production program);

the limit of cash balances at the end of the period in case of unforeseen expenses;

control of the absence of "cash" gaps.

Control is carried out in accordance with the planning regulations, the main principles of which are:

compliance of the submitted applications with the financial plan;

making payments based on written requests from the initiating services;

the transfer of funds is made in accordance with the register for payment approved by the Chief Financial Officer.

Payment requests submitted by units in excess of the plan are paid only with the permission of senior management (or a person replacing him).

When “cash gaps” appear (that is, a situation where the expenditure side of the budget exceeds the revenue side, and the final balance of funds as of a specific date becomes negative), measures are taken to eliminate them - a decision to “cut” costs (or shift costs over time) or getting a bank loan.

It is possible to introduce budgeting in an enterprise using ordinary Excel, but such a solution will have some limitation in use. For example, single-user mode, the inability to agree on functional budgets, there is no delimitation of access to information, the complexity of consolidation, etc. Thus, Excel budgeting is not an optimal choice for a company.

Payment schedule

From the point of view of budgeting, the payment calendar is a system for backing up the DS from the plan. But unlike the BDDS, this is a more detailed document. After all, if in strategic planning it does not matter who exactly will receive or to whom the money will be paid, then in operational planning everything is in full view: here are debtors-debtors, and here are creditors.

Therefore, in the payment calendar, you can describe in detail: to whom, when, from whom, for what and how much you should pay (receive).

The payment calendar is a cash flow plan (hereinafter - DDS) in the short term (week-month), reflecting all types of enterprise activities (core, financial, investment), approved by the management within the limits and capabilities of the enterprise.

The payment calendar of the company allows the company to avoid cash gaps. There are several recipes that have been proven in practice. We will tell you what sections it is important to foresee in the article and provide a sample of a payment calendar.

Who needs a payment calendar?

The information presented in the payment calendar of the enterprise is necessary for business owners, top and middle managers, heads of financial responsibility centers (hereinafter referred to as CFD) and employees of the financial and economic block.

From the point of view of budgeting, the payment calendar is a system for reserving funds from the plan

The range of issues related to the competence of the financial director, one of the most important managers of the enterprise, is unusually wide - from the tasks of operational cash management to the problems of the company's strategic development. In addition, in any enterprise, financial management is closely related to its main activity - production, trade or provision of services, and therefore, with resource management. The introduction of a payment calendar will reduce the work of the CFO to control the expenditure of DS.If previously he had to view and sign each request for payment, then with the introduction of a payment calendar, when the payment amounts are approved in the budgets, and the procedure for agreeing payments is formalized, the control of cash flows can be assigned to the employee financial service. The find director will only approve a limited number of payments, usually over-limit, large or irregular. For example, it is enough to agree on the amount of payment for renting an office once when the budget is approved, leaving control of the payment procedure itself and the compliance of the amounts with the budget for the financier.

Correctly built business processes help to minimize the risk of abuse by employees of the enterprise by separating the functions of controlling payments and their initiation. For example, the head of a business line accepts all requests for payment in his CFD and is responsible for budget execution, while a financial officer monitors the compliance of applications with budget limits and the implementation of the payment system's regulatory procedures.

Tasks that the payment calendar will solve

1. Avoid cash gaps and non-fulfillment of the company's obligations to counterparties. The main goal of forming a payment calendar is to combat cash gaps, in which there is no money in the cash register and on the current account. Being in fact the planned "schedule" of the company's DDS flow, the payment calendar allows predicting cash gaps, taking measures in advance to eliminate situations of the need to make payments in the absence of sufficient funds on the company's account. Following the principle "forewarned is forearmed", it is possible to quickly change plans for spending money, thereby preventing a cash gap.

You can make preliminary "estimates", change the dates of receipts and payments, coordinate them with counterparties - and reflect all this directly in the payment calendar.

2. Avoid spending more than the approved amount. Even if the company has a lot of money, this does not mean that it can be spent thoughtlessly. Spending is only allowed within the accepted budgets. Unforeseen situations that require going over budget are rather exceptions to the general rule. The payment calendar allows you to control whether the payment is within budget.

3. Manage the liquidity of the company. One of the main criteria for the correctness of management decisions made in the financial sector is the positiveness of the aggregate flow of DS at any time.

4. Provide reliable information on-line. It is important to receive financial information promptly. The disadvantage of the payment calendar implemented in Excel is the time it takes to rebuild reports. The payment calendar should be integrated into the operational accounting system so that double entry is not required to obtain reliable data.

5. Ensure that procedures for negotiating cost payments are properly followed. The approval procedure should include a certain delegation of responsibility, depending on the importance of a particular payment.

6. Eliminate the human factor as much as possible.

The planning of DO flows implies the possibility of liquidity management companies. The liquidity indicator of an enterprise takes into account the state and value of its current assets and liabilities.

The payment calendar is a plan for the movement of money in the short term, reflecting all the activities of the company, approved by the management within the limits and capabilities of the enterprise

The main components of current assets are stocks, accounts receivable and DS, current liabilities - accounts payable.

The payment calendar allows you to manage accounts payable and receivable. This is especially true with an increase in the number of buyers or suppliers, since it becomes possible to clearly determine the dates of payments for the timely receipt of raw materials, services, ensure the efficiency of the enterprise, and prevent the occurrence of penalties.

Management of DCs related to inventories immediately sets the task of managing inventory turnover. The faster it is, the less warehouse stocks, the cheaper they cost the company, the more efficiently DS are used to purchase the necessary raw materials, materials, goods for the main activity.

When there is a shortage of "real" money, it is especially important that the enterprise works to agree on a payment plan at all levels of management and a competent, well-thought-out prioritization.

In practice, a situation often arises when the plan of receipts is not fulfilled, and the plan for spending the DS is fulfilled in full, respectively, the total amount of applications for payment exceeds the actual receipt of the DS. To avoid cash gaps, it is advisable to rank all payments according to their priority or importance. Payment for items with the highest priority is mandatory, with lower priority, subject to additional conditions. For example, applications for payment of debts to the main suppliers of products, taxes are satisfied in the first place, while the costs of training, modernization of office equipment are financed when the sales plan is fulfilled by at least 90%.

In this regard, the analysis of the so-called constant payments is very useful: often enterprises have costs that they are used to and do not question their feasibility. Taking a fresh look at your payment structure will help you determine if these costs are really necessary. Drawing up a VAT plan only makes sense when you can be sure that all the necessary payments are taken into account. The plan is drawn up in order to exclude the need for "sudden" financing of any "super important" projects. It is necessary to think over the directions of spending the DS in advance; in a crisis situation, it is appropriate to introduce stricter deadlines for agreeing a payment plan at all levels of enterprise management.

As for the execution of the plan, the practice of daily reconciliation of the cash balance of the DS deserves attention, which will eliminate possible abuse, will give managers reliable information about the current balance of funds on the accounts and at the cash desk of the enterprise, which is necessary for making decisions on the implementation of current payments.

Register of payments in the payment calendar

An important part of the worker payment calendar- register of planned payments. As a rule, it is this document that is submitted for signature to the financial or general director. Moreover, ideally, the register of payments contains not only such standard columns as the date of drawing up the application for payment, account and contract numbers, the name of the counterparty and the amount to be paid, but also a number of additional fields that will help the head of the treasury department (or the financial director, if both such treasury function is not highlighted) to form payment schedule, namely:

• name of the budget item , within which the payment will be made. One of the classic procedures performed when approving payment requests is checking for compliance with the budget. Such a check will be much easier to carry out not on a separate application, but on the register of payments. For this, for each declared payment, it will be justified to indicate the name of the budget item;
• source of payment - it is indicated from which current account (from which cash office) it is planned to pay money on the application. Without this, when drawing up a payment calendar, it will be difficult to plan the balances at the beginning and end of the day in the context of the company's current accounts;
• authorization - an additional feature reflecting the status of the application: agreed or not agreed. By the way, this field can be divided into several components, for example, by the positions of the responsible persons taking part in the approval. As a result, the CFO, who received a register of payments for signature at the beginning of the week (or at the end of the previous one), will clearly see which applications have received approval at the previous stages, and which are still pending approval and from whom;
• fact of order execution - a field that will contain a note about whether the application has been paid for or not, as well as the date of payment. If necessary, the initiator will be able to quickly receive information about the status of his application, and the CFO can quickly update the payment calendar by entering into it those payments that have already passed this week.

Rules for collecting and passing applications

It is safe to say that the compilation payment calendar, anything reliable, will not work for the next week if the company does not have payment regulations. There will always be heads of departments who will demand that one or another bill be paid immediately. And this despite the fact that in practice, situations rarely arise when it is impossible to foresee the need for certain payments at least a week in advance. Most often, "urgency" is the reason for the forgetfulness and negligence of individual employees, which is simply unacceptable in relation to money today. The payment regulations determine the rules for filling out applications, the procedure for approval, as well as the terms in which the application can be submitted and the time when it will be executed. For example, the initiator of the payment forms an application and its acceptance by the head of the department - every Monday until 16.00, cash withdrawal on agreed applications - Wednesday, Thursday, Friday after 11.00; non-cash payment on applications of the first priority - every Thursday until 14.00, etc.

The regulations for making payments are approved by the order of the general director of the enterprise and are brought to the attention of all employees. By the way, the most important thing in the payment regulations is to pay special attention to how the application will proceed, if the deadlines for its submission are violated, the budget limit is exceeded. This will not only determine the order of actions in an unforeseen situation, but will also motivate people to follow the rules more strictly. For example, if the deadline for the formation of the application is violated, and the regulations for this case provide for communication with the financial or general director, for the vast majority of employees this is a serious incentive to continue to inform the financial service in advance about any payments. You can download the payment regulations below under the article.

Planning the receipt of funds

Paradoxically, the most difficult thing is to plan the amount of incoming funds per day in the payment calendar. Most often they act as follows. The receipts planned in the cash flow budget are divided by the number of working days in the month and the resulting figure is entered into the calendar as the incoming cash flow of one day. Actually, there is no other solution, especially when it comes to a company that works with retail customers without concluding preliminary contracts. But this must be taken into account when planning payments. For example, the company has account balances at the beginning of the day of 150 thousand hryvnia, 300 thousand hryvnia is expected to be received. Based on these data, it is planned to pay bills in the amount of 450 thousand hryvnia. As a result, it turns out that out of the planned 300 thousand hryvnias by the end of the banking day, only 200 thousand hryvnias were received. And the entire payment calendar needs to be redone. Moreover, the balances on the current accounts were planned to be zero, and the company has an agreement with the bank, according to which it undertakes to maintain a minimum balance on the account - 10 thousand hryvnias.

And in addition to everything, it will not be superfluous to include data on the company's unselected limits under credit lines. For example, this information can be specified in the same place as the information on incoming balances. In this case, information about the financial capabilities of the enterprise in the payment calendar will be presented as fully as possible, and the CFO will be able to more efficiently manage the available resources.

Prioritizing when there is no money to pay all bills

Today it is quite typical for many companies that the available funds are not enough to pay for all accepted applications. As a rule, this leads to the fact that a meeting is held with all heads of departments, during which they discuss which payments can be deferred. A lot of time and effort is spent on such a procedure. It is possible to manage money more efficiently if the priority of payment and the term of payment under the agreement are indicated in each application. With this data, the CFO will be able to independently decide on the postponement of certain payments to a later date. As a rule, wage arrears, to the budget, and banks are paid first of all. The second stage is the key counterparties, the rupture of relations with which threatens the company with stopping production or significant penalties. The third stage is all other payments.

By the way, in order to make it more convenient to track unpaid orders, it is better not only to indicate the fact of execution (or non-execution of the order), but also to provide in the payment calendar, in addition to the classical division of payments by cost items, also analytics by counterparties. The easiest way is to create a payment calendar in Excel. Then it will be enough to enter an additional column in which to indicate the recipient. As a result, it will be possible to quickly display a list of debtors who need to be paid in the near future.

Payment calendar execution

After the payment calendar has been drawn up, it remains to update it. As a rule, this is done at the end of the day on the basis of an extract from the bank-client system. Instead of planned data, information is entered on actually made payments, receipts and, most importantly, balances. If necessary, you can provide for the possibility of daily analysis of deviations of planned values ​​from actual ones. But, as a rule, such an analysis is justified at the end of the week.

Another nuance that should be taken into account when drawing up the company's payment calendar is to make an enlarged plan of receipts and payments dividing by weeks (and not by days) for the next month. This will help you better navigate upcoming payments, especially if some of them have already been postponed due to lack of funds.

Implementation of a payment calendar in ERP systems. ODOO Treasury Outlook

Excel is, of course, very good, but sometimes it is not enough. Now there are several solutions on the market that, to one degree or another, can satisfy the needs of the company. There are also some pretty good online services like https://finance-controlling.net or http://abmcloud.com/. The downside is that, in fact, you will not do anything except the Payment calendar in them. If we take an integrated approach, then probably one of the best solutions will be the use of the functionality of the CRM / ERP system ODOO... And now let's look at the tools that this system presents to us, which will help to fulfill all your needs.

One of the most interesting tools is the Treasury Forecast functionality (hereinafter referred to as KP), which allows you to predict the balance of funds on the company's account after all payments have been made and after it has been formed, you can analyze the cash flow as if all these payments were already have been implemented.

As we wrote above in the theoretical part, the Payment calendar is best based on contracts (based on the terms of contracts) or, as an option, based on the application system. Moreover, at different enterprises "Wishlist" may be different and ideas about the ideal "Payment calendar" may also be different.

For example, for some enterprises, it will be enough to keep a table in Excel, in which the balance of money at the beginning of the period, expected receipts and planned expenses with the withdrawal of the final balance will simply be written, for larger enterprises this option will be less acceptable.

We will not consider the way of submitting purchase bids and how the sales order is formed in the system, we partially considered this, and now let's consider the basic functionality of the "Treasury forecast" directly.

I would like to note right away that it is possible to create templates for standard payments and then drag them into the treasury forecast. This can be done directly in the KP templates. There you should fill in the most typical payments, which will then be automatically pulled into the treasury forecast. Looking ahead, I will say that they will pull themselves up only after pressing the "Form" button in the command post itself. At the same time, the template has only two tabs: Variable and recurring payments.

Even if you do not plan to start real templates, you will still have to make one, since the "Template" field is required in the form of commercial proposal, it can simply be made "empty".

Outwardly, the Treasury forecast looks like this:

As we can see, you can set the interval for which the register is formed, the name (for example, "register of payments for ... .."). In the Calculation / Initial amount field, enter the amount of money that you already have in the account, so that after saving the "Treasury forecast" the system will calculate the amount that you will have on it after all payments have been made. But remember, if you make a Payment Calendar for a period of more than one day, the amount that will turn out in the end will not indicate that everything is fine with you, and why we’ll talk about it below.

To begin with, let's create a Treasury forecast manually and for these purposes we have as many as four tabs: "Recurring payments", "Variable payments", "Debtors" and "Other payments". In the last tab, you will not be able to specify the name of the counterparty from which the money should come or to which this money should go. And let's take a closer look at this tab.

As we can see, at the beginning of the period, the balance of funds was UAH 10,000.00 and we manually filled in the predicted payments into the system, after saving the forecast, the system calculated the balance of funds for us after all payments were made (Final amount field).

Theoretically, you can enter here manually all your payments and use the Treasury forecast without using other tabs. But why do this if the functionality of this tool is much wider.

Let's imagine that you have signed a lease agreement with a counterparty, according to which you need to pay, let's say UAH 15,000.00 by the 20th day of each month.

This payment can be entered in the "Recurring payments" tab and you will know that this payment will be repeated in the next period and you should not relax :)

If you have accounts receivable for long periods and your debtor has made you happy with the good news that he will pay you, say UAH 20,000.00 by the 15th, then this is not a reason for joy and entering this payment into the "Debtors" tab.

If you have accounts payable and you decide to pay it, then this information can be entered in the "Variable payments" tab. Let's say you decide to pay UAH 10,000.00 to the supplier for the parts you bought that year.

All three tabs about which we mentioned have a field "Partner", in which you can specify the name of the counterparty, which is more informative for those who are looking at the "Treasury forecast".

Memo: it is necessary to put the sign correctly in the "Other payments" tab. If the payment is outgoing, then you need to write the amount with a “-” sign and put the Type “Output”. In all other tabs, you do not need to use the "-" sign, except when you or you are making a refund.

And finally we come to the first two tabs. The peculiarity of these tabs is that, in principle, you do not need to hammer anything into the system, you just need to apply filters and click the "Generate" button and the system will pull up invoices to buyers and suppliers who are unpaid and who have already approached the payment deadline specified in the account itself. Naturally, if you have these accounts entered into the system and if you use the Odoo functionality to the fullest :)

At the same time, you can filter out which invoices should be tightened: already held, drafts (for forecasting, and what will happen if we pay this invoice or our buyer pays us) or in a pro forma state.

You can also independently select all the accounts you are interested in from the list. That is, you can generate all the payments that you need to make and analyze them for the presence of a cash gap. If suddenly you see that you clearly do not have enough money for some payment, you can either remove this payment from the register or transfer it to another day.

After agreeing on all payments, this register can be sent to the accountant for payment, who, after paying the bills, makes these payments in the system. If you then generate the treasury forecast again, then the paid invoices will no longer be included in the register, as a result of which the information will be updated.

Also pay attention to the column "Payment mode", here you can set your most typical payments grouped according to a certain criterion: for example, "taxes", "payment from the buyer", etc. This will then help you a lot when analyzing payments. Or you can set, for example, a classification by the urgency of the payment: "Urgent: taxes", "Non-urgent: stationery". The main thing is that you understand the essence of the payment.

Analysis of treasury forecasts

After the treasury forecast is formed, it can be analyzed. This can be done using the Treasury Forecast Analysis functionality. Which in a tabular form is very similar to a cash flow statement.

Here we can immediately see the cash flow. Moreover, we can additionally filter them by date, type and mode of payment. In addition to this type, we can see all payments in the same way in the form of a calendar

either as a pivot table

Returning to the period of drawing up the commercial proposal, we note that if your forecast is made, for example, for a week, then it is worth additionally analyzing the receipts and expenditures of funds by day, so that you do not accidentally have a cash gap on some of the days. In general, the picture can be very beautiful, but on some of the days a situation may arise when there are expenses for the DS, but the arrival will be only the next. Watch this.

As we can see, with the correct use of this tool, you can get really useful information and plan your payments so that we do not have cash gaps at the most inopportune moment.

Chapter " Calendar»Serves to schedule recurring payments, or those payments, the dates of which are known in advance. Also, in this section, you can schedule any other event (not related to entering income or expense into the program). It should be noted that the "Calendar" is not designed for entering daily expenses and income, for these purposes the section " Accounts". Also, if you want to draw up a complete plan of expenses and income for the next month, you should do this in the section" Budget".

All payments and events are displayed in a very convenient and visual form (analogous to a regular wall calendar):

How to add a new payment

There are three ways to add a new payment to the calendar: select the " Create payment", or right-click on the square corresponding to the required date and select" Create payment":

Also, you can simply open any day in the calendar to view detailed information (left-click on any quarter) and select the desired action:

As you may have noticed, two types of events are supported: payment and the note... A payment is a financial event that has a specific date, amount, and type (expense, income, or transfer of funds). A note is a simple textual information (for example, "do not forget to close a deposit account of a certain date").

In turn, the payment can be of two types - expense / income and transfer of funds from one account to another. There can be a huge variety of examples of the first type, these are planning of payment for studies, utilities, planning of salaries or advance payments, and so on. Scheduling the transfer of funds from one account to another can be useful, say, when planning to pay off a debt / loan (you have a debt account and cash, and you plan to transfer money from cash to this debt, thereby paying off part of it).

The payment planning window itself looks like this:

Pay attention to the field " A comment". The calendar will display exactly the information that is specified in this field. If the field" A comment"will not be filled in, then the program will automatically substitute the name of the planned category as a comment. For example, we plan to receive a salary on the 7th. Select the category" Income: Salary "and, without specifying a comment, add the payment. As a result, it will look like this :

If we open this payment, we will see that the program in the " A comment"duplicated the selected category:

Having written down your comment (for example, "Getting a salary"), the planned income in the calendar will look like this (of course, the category itself will remain the same):

But, until the planned payment is entered into the register, it will remain just a plan. Adding a payment to the calendar will not decrease the amount of money in any account. After the payment has been made, it must be entered in the register (i.e., record the actual expense on the invoice). To do this, you need to open the payment and click the " Register entry":

After that, the payment will be deleted from the calendar, and the expense itself will appear in the invoice as a real expense:

In addition, when adding a new payment, you can make it automatically carried out in the program (that is, so that the program itself enters it into the register and deletes it in the calendar). For this you need in the field " Register entry"select item" Automatically":

Also, it is important to note the following. When drawing up the budget for the next month, you can avoid duplicating those payments that were planned through the calendar. It is enough just to include payments from the calendar into the plan in the budget settings, and the program will automatically add payments from the calendar to the planned expenses and income.

Quick Actions

You can change the date of payment, or make a copy of it, with just one movement of the mouse. To move a payment, left-click on the colored background of the payment itself (the area indicated by the red arrow in the picture below) and, without releasing the left mouse button, drag the payment to another day (another square), and then release the mouse button:

Copying a payment is done in the same way as moving it, with one small difference - you need to hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard before moving it. That is, first we press the Ctrl key, then we click the mouse without releasing the key and the mouse button, drag the payment to another day, after which we release the left mouse button and the Ctrl key on the keyboard.

Other calendar functions

The calendar also supports the following additional functions:

Save to file

Selecting the menu item on the left on the taskbar " Save", the program will offer to save the current month with all payments and notes in an HTML file, which can then be viewed on any computer, or printed. It supports saving in two forms - a general list, or in a" wall calendar "format.

Sync with Google

The program allows you to synchronize scheduled payments and notes with the Google calendar. Just click the menu " Google calendar"and in the section that opens, click the button" To plug", after which the program will link to your calendar and transfer all the information there. Thus, your payments will be displayed on your smartphone and other devices connected to the Google calendar, which will allow you not to miss a single payment:

Missed payments

If the payment was not entered into the register (i.e. not actually made), then it becomes skipped. You can view all missed payments (with the possibility of deleting them or entering them into the register) through the "Missed payments" menu item on the taskbar.

Finally, it should be noted that payments entered in the calendar are also displayed on the main page (module " Calendar"), as well as in the budget (if the option to share the budget and calendar is enabled in the" Budget "section).