Have a look at some of the scenarios below to see whether the Business Cash Plan might be right for you.

 
Small business

Mark owns a small furniture shop. He employs 6 staff including a part-timer – Claire, who manages the pay-roll and paying the bills. Mark has FastNet Business and has given Claire permissions so that she can view the business accounts, but cannot authorise payments.

Mark can use the Business Cash Plan default Code List until when he starts using the tool. This will give him a good introduction to start to coding his transactions. He’ll be able to see the ups and downs of his cash flow relative to the money going in and out of his business accounts.

Coding and splitting his transactions to help forecast cash flow will help him complete GST returns with the summary report produced when he codes his income and expenses. This means that he can save time on preparing his accounts for his accountant as he can do this regularly and easily using his FastNet Business access.

With the income and expenses that Mark can now track more easily, he can get a better idea of his future cash flows using the forecasting graph. This now gives him a better idea of when he can expect furniture stock expenses, and ensure they align with forecasted sales and revenues.

 
Rural

Brent and Ann own a small farm. They’re both ASB personal customers and have joint business accounts with ASB. To manage their business accounts they both have FastNet Classic. They sometimes dip into their arranged overdraft to cover the bills during the winter season when cash flow is low, but they’re never sure if their overdraft limit is going to be enough to cover the bills.

Brent and Ann use the Business Cash Plan default Code List to code their transactions. This gives them a good idea of where their income and expenses are sitting. They realise that over the last year they have spent a considerable amount on tractor repairs when they could have invested the money to upgrade their tractor.

They forecast their expected income and expenses over the next 12 months and realise that in May is the best time for them to purchase a tractor because that’s when their forecasted expenses are at their lowest.

The Dashboard showing their Highs & Lows based on their current transaction history shows that May is when their income is at their highest. But that they must purchase before June as this is when they start dipping into their arranged overdraft to cover their bills.

 
Investment property

Sarah uses FastNet Classic to manage her personal accounts – savings and transaction accounts, she is also LAQC registered. She and her husband James have two ASB home loans. One is for the home she lives in and the other is for their investment property (LAQC).

Sarah uses the Code List that she found on the ASB website, and has imported this into her Business Cash Plan.  This Code List is specific to LAQC entities so is ideal for Sarah and James and their accountant.

Sarah finds coding is easy with Business Cash Plan as she can do a little coding every month to keep her transactions up to date for her accountant. This saves her time and also saves a little on her accountant’s bill because she has managed to give him all the information herself rather than have him do this for her.

The Reports from her coding shows where there are spikes of activity and how this coincides with the rental income. She has now chosen to pay her house insurance monthly instead of yearly, so that it coincides with the rent coming in. This frees her up for the unexpected bills that seem to come in around winter time.

 
Personal

Carl uses FastNet Classic, and has several accounts – savings, transactions and credit cards. He works at Company Purple but is set up as a contractor so needs to keep a record of all his expenses that he incurs for work so that he can claim this back for tax purposes. Carl also likes to keep track of his finances but is not really account savvy so likes to keep it simple.

Carl uses the default Code List and only uses the relevant codes for his needs. Coding his transactions has identified in the report summary that he spends more than he earns and a large proportion of that is on food and drink (entertaining).

He has also identified on the Cash Position Dashboard that surplus cash he has is spent instead of being transferred into a savings account or transferred to make payment to his ASB Visa. Carl will also be able to use the reports generated to give a summary to enable his accountant to prepare his GST return, instead of taking in a stack of Visa receipts and highlighted statements.