The owner of a regional trading business used to open five bank apps every morning, add the balances in his head, and still not know whether he could pay Friday’s payroll. Three branch offices generated revenue on different days, and money moved between them whenever someone needed cash. When payroll day came, he was always one transfer away from panic. Twenty-two days of cash were tied up in limbo.
One dashboard changed his Saturday scroll
ERPNext Consulting built a cash-position view that pulled sales, supplier bills, and bank balances across all branches into a single daily summary. The owner stopped relying on the branch managers’ WhatsApp messages entirely.
Almost immediately he saw that his busiest branch was holding $40,000 in receivables while a quieter branch was carrying the full payroll load. Without a shared system, money moved fast and information moved slowly.
Visibility beats adrenaline every time
A consultant on the ERPNext Consulting team told me something I now say to every client: cash flow problems are usually information problems. The cure is not more discipline — it’s a cleaner view of what will hit the account this week.
- Set a rule: no branch transfers after Tuesday, so cash settles and the dashboard reflects a real balance before the weekend.
- Schedule one 15-minute weekly cash meeting, not a monthly marathon, to approve the next five days of outflows.
- Give each branch its own internal budget code, so an outflow is matched to its branch the same day — not four days later in a reconciliation shock.
From panic to a boringly calm Friday
After six weeks the business had a buffer that covered payroll before the week started. Days of cash tied up fell from 22 to 9. The owner now checks one screen at 7am, calls no one, and simply knows.
The reframe that matters: cash isn’t something you control with heroics; it’s something you see in time to act. That’s what the ERPNext Consulting assessment delivered here — not more spreadsheets, but one calmly reliable number.