Cash flow forecasting in the agriculture sector

Home Customer stories Cash flow forecasting in the agriculture sector

Case study

Learn how Meshed Group, a cloud advisory firm, helped an agriculture client get rid of unauthorised spending and improve cash flow forecasting by combining Xero, Hubdoc, and ApprovalMax for a fully automated, paperless approval process.

Meshed Group is a South African company that specialises in offering consulting services on cloud accounting solutions. It strives to maximise clients’ productivity and aims to change the industry by automating routine tasks using best-of-breed accounting software.

10+

Employees

Xero

Accounting Platform

Cloud Advisory Firm

Industry

South Africa

Location

By combining Xero with ApprovalMax and the data entry tool Hubdoc, we created a powerful app ecosystem that improves productivity and enhances the accuracy of data significantly to enable reliable cash flow forecasts with little effort. ApprovalMax also delivers a paperless environment for a fully automated approval process. And the collaboration between different departments has never been easier, now that employees don’t have to email each other for manual approvals anymore.

Juan Visser

Managing Director at Meshed Group

The challenge

Meshed Group took on a new client, an agriculture group, which had about 6 million South African rand worth of unauthorised spending in just a year. Thanks to ApprovalMax, this was brought down to zero. The business also needed reliable cash flow forecasting as it took supplier invoices about three to four weeks to reach the finance manager’s office, and then payments were due three days after the invoice had been processed. So, the team struggled to get accurate data for each farm, or data capture was delayed because they had to wait for someone to provide the information on where to post the purchases. And they were never able to pinpoint how much their tomatoes or peppers are actually costing them. Nobody actually knew exactly how much had to be paid when, and how much cash was required for that.

The solution

Using the built-in reporting capabilities of ApprovalMax gives Meshed Group an invaluable insight into the company’s cash flow status. The team can very accurately forecast the cash flow requirements a month or two in advance, even before the supplier invoices have been issued. For the creation of forecasts, the team uses the information on contacts and dates of the outstanding approved purchase orders that ApprovalMax provides them with. That’s how they know what amounts have to be paid in 30 or 60 days. Getting the contacts and dates of authorised purchase orders from ApprovalMax makes it easy for them to manually prepare cash flow forecasts in advance.

Here’s how it goes: purchase order requester creates a purchase order in ApprovalMax and adds the required information. When the supplier invoice arrives at the office, the clerk converts the purchase order into a bill. As the necessary data has been captured before, this is fast and easy. All the clerk needs to do is check that there is a corresponding purchase order for the invoice and then match the bill and purchase order in ApprovalMax.

“Getting the contacts and dates of authorised purchase orders from ApprovalMax makes it easy for us to manually prepare cash flow forecasts in advance. The farm manager has access to ApprovalMax and knows which commodity a specific expense has to be assigned to. Now, it’s really simple to create an expense report at the end of the day. Since we implemented ApprovalMax, the purchaser can enter amounts under the correct expense and tracking category straight away, without a third person having to repost entries after receiving the supplier invoices,” – says Juan Visser, Managing Director at Meshed Group.