The cash sheet is right. It dates from Monday.

Monday’s file, Thursday’s question

In a small company, cash is almost always steered the same way: a spreadsheet kept by one person, updated on Monday morning, and consulted by the owner whenever they have a doubt. The file is well made. It is right. It is simply three days behind on Thursday, and five on Friday evening.

That lag does not matter in the quiet months. It matters in the month two invoices go late without anyone noticing, because lateness only shows up the next time the file is opened. You discover the problem when the balance drops, which is the moment it is most expensive to deal with.

The cause is not the competence of whoever keeps the spreadsheet. It is that the question comes up every day and the answer is manufactured once a week.

The invisible work

What takes time in tracking receipts is not reading the balance. It is the reconciliation: matching issued invoices against recorded receipts, and deciding what each bank line is paying for.

Most lines match themselves through the invoice reference. The work concentrates on the exceptions: a partial transfer, a client settling three invoices in one payment, a description with no usable reference. Those are the cases that eat the morning.

An assistant handles the mechanical part well, and must stop dead on the exceptions. Concretely, a receipt with no reference must not be assigned to any invoice until someone has ruled. Guessing where a payment belongs is manufacturing a false entry that will resurface in the accountant’s reconciliation three months later.

The red line

On this subject more than any other, the question to put to a provider is about permissions. A cash assistant can see your accounts. The only acceptable answer is that it sees them read-only, and nothing else.

• No transfer, no direct debit. No write access to the bank, no connection able to initiate a payment, not even “with confirmation”.
• No estimate presented as a fact. Every amount stated points back to the invoice or the bank line it came from, openable in one gesture.
• The freshness date on display. If the last export is three days old, the assistant says so before answering. A partial view announced as partial stays usable.

That third point is the underestimated one. A tool that shows a comfortable figure without saying which data it is working from is more dangerous than a file that is behind, because with the file at least you know it is behind.

The follow-up drafted, never sent alone

Spotting a late payment is useless if nobody follows up. And nobody follows up because the follow-up means opening the invoice, finding the amount, checking no payment has arrived in the meantime, and finding the right tone with a client you want to keep.

That is where the time is really recovered. The follow-up comes out prepared, with the exact reference, the exact amount and the number of days overdue. It waits for a green light. The gesture left to make takes five seconds instead of ten minutes, and that difference is why the follow-up goes out the same day rather than the following week.

On overdues that drag, the second follow-up becomes a human task with a name against it. There is a point where the subject stops being an automatic reminder and becomes a phone call, and an honest tool tells you so instead of sending a third polite email.