3. Navigating Capital Expenditure In the world of transport and logistics, staying ahead often means making strategic investments in technology, storage facilities, and fleet management. These investments can range from upgrading transportation vehicles, implementing new warehouse management systems or simply acquiring new additions to the fleet. Cash flow forecasting helps to provide the financial insights necessary to plan and execute these investments without putting an undue strain on the company’s cash balances. Companies can use the information available to evaluate whether or not they have the funds to cover the costs straight from the bank or if other financing options are required. 4. Making Informed Decisions Transport and logistics is a dynamic sector, meaning that decisions must be made promptly and accurately. Cash flow forecasting can facilitate this by providing decision-makers with accurate and timely financial insights. Whether it’s determining whether to expand into a new market, negotiating contracts with customers, or the use of external financing, having a clear picture of the financial implications of future strategy is invaluable. This process has become even more of a consideration after recent events following the pandemic, when cross border activity came to a halt, to the more recent cost of living crisis. Now more than ever is it crucial that contingency plans are in place. Through the use of cash flow forecasts, decision-makers can analyse and make informed decisions on varying scenarios and ‘what-if’ events to ensure plain sailing through the murky waters.
5. Getting Through the Day Whether your goals are to iron out the day-to-day glitches, expand your operations with new capital expenditure or merely just to survive another day, cash flow forecasts are an extremely useful tool to help with your decision making. Logistics and transport firms are no exception, since they need to maintain a well- functioning fleet, ensure there is sufficient cash to meet fluctuating diesel prices, as well as to meet the costs of staffing and dealing with periods of high demand. A cash flow forecast will help analyse your cash flow can help to ensure the smooth running of your company’s operations, which at the end of the day provides us with the satisfaction we all long for.
A finance professional can help you overcome your cash flow challenges by:
•
carrying out an initial cash flow review to identify both ‘quick wins’ and opportunities for longer-term improvements benchmarking your working capital cycle to compare against your peers’ performance and identify potential opportunities to improve developing detailed action plans for your business, where the dependencies between cash, costs and customer service are optimised recommending appropriate technology solutions to ensure that your company is making the best use of the latest cloud-based accounting packages and apps supporting the implementation of sustainable procedures which focus on: optimising your processes throughout your working capital cycles
•
•
•
•
compliance and monitoring
identification and improvement of commercial terms
Get in touch with Sam or one of his colleagues to discuss how they can help with your cash flow forecasting. Please phone 0330 058 6559 or email hello@scruttonbland.co.uk
TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS | SCRUTTON BLAND | 9
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog