Synopses & Reviews
The fixation on flashy industries like telecommunications, information technology, and financial services in the go-go nineties went hand-in-hand with a fixation on flashy valuation standards-revenue increases, reported profits, earnings per share, and price-earnings ratios. Like the headline-grabbing industries that spectacularly imploded, their popular accounting measures gradually proved to be as much smoke and mirrors as they were real dollars and cents. In Managing Cash Flow, Rob Reider and Peter Heyler return to the bedrock foundations of business, eschewing paper profits and nebulous numbers to concentrate on the vital functions that actually produce cash and keep organizations afloat.
The authors' forceful guide approaches cash management with an operational focus, endeavoring to maintain companies in the most economical, efficient, and effective manner possible. Given the legitimate room for interpretation, "profit" is as much a product of the accountant's imagination as it is real money. Cash, however, is cash-measurable, tangible, absolute. It meets payroll, pays vendors, and satisfies tax requirements. Among other topics, Managing Cash Flow: An Operational Focus helps readers understand:
* How to recognize and manage effectively the principal factors affecting cash receipts and cash disbursements in the organization
* The impact of operations-organizational planning, sales, operating costs, non-value-added activities-on the cash flow of the company
* Effective principles for investing excess cash and borrowing to cover cash shortfalls
* Practical planning techniques and procedures for managing the cash flow of the organization
The authors also identify a host of common business functions-sales; customer order backlog; accounts receivable; inventory; property, plant, and equipment; employment; and management and administration-that too often become ends in themselves and distract from the essential cash-flow function. The book imparts vital techniques for keeping these functions streamlined and focused on the ultimate goal.
In broadly questioning which businesses a company should and should not be in, the authors effectively apply a cash-flow criterion to the sum total of a company's operations, eliminating excess and concentrating on what's most important. Their bottom line is THE bottom line: good old-fashioned money. CFOs, controllers, treasurers, and cash managers will find Managing Cash Flow: An Operational Focus to be an indispensable resource.
Synopsis
- Provides the tool necessary to determine and evaluate the effectiveness of a corporation's management of cash.
- Examines how operational activities can affect cash flow management.
- Shows how effective cash flow management can improve corporate performance and increase shareholder value.
- Provides an overview of cash management techniques.
Synopsis
Focusing on the tangible, cash flow operations that make business work
In business, there are pie-in-the-sky valuation standards like share prices and stock options that have alternately led executives to untold riches and to federal prisons. and then there is cold hard cash-the dollars and cents that pay the bills, keep the tax man at bay, and ensure a company's ongoing survival. Rob Reider and Peter Heyler redirect corporate attention to core, cash management operation in Managing Cash Flow: An Operational Focus.
The authors' comprehensive guide focuses on how a corporation can enhance its overall cash position on an ongoing basis. Reider and Heyler identify business functions that too often become ends in themselves-accounts receivable, inventory, administration-and remind readers of a company's primary goals:
* Customer service
* Cash conversion
* Making money
* Survival
Managing Cash Flow: An Operational Focus offers a host of procedures and techniques for applying a cash-flow criterion to all business functions, keeping companies focused on the proverbial bottom line.
Nothing happens in business without measurable, tangible, absolute cash. Rob Reider and Peter Heyler offer a must-have, common-sense guide for keeping companies in the black.
About the Author
ROB REIDER, CPA, MBA, PhD, is the President of Reider Associates (Santa Fe, New Mexico), a management and organizational consulting firm. Prior to founding Reider Associates, he was a manager in the Management Consulting Group of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. (now KPMG.) He is the course author as well as seminar leader of over twenty workshops conducted nationally, and is also the author of the Wiley titles, Benchmarking Strategies: A Tool for Profit Improvement and Improving the Economy, Efficiency, and Effectiveness of Not-for-Profits: Conducting Operational Reviews. He can be contacted at
[email protected].
PETER B. HEYLER, CPA, MBA, is a Principal with Reider Associates and a management consultant and educator with his own firm, PBH Executive Services. He has also been a vice president of finance and administration, treasurer, and chief financial officer for three manufacturing companies, as well as a senior accountant and consultant with Arthur Young & Co. He has authored or coauthored numerous seminar programs-presented both nationally and internationally. He can be reached at [email protected].
Table of Contents
About the Authors.
Acknowledgments.
Introduction.
Understanding Cash Management.
Managing Cash Flow—Receipts and Disbursements.
Planning and Budgeting.
Analyzing the Sales Function.
Cost Reduction Analysis Procedures.
Analyzing Non-Value-Added Functions.
Investing, Financing, and Borrowing.
Planning Cash Flow.
Controlling and Analyzing Cash Flow.
Afterword.
Appendix A—Case Study: Managing Cash Flow.
Appendix B—Cash Conservation Checklist.
Index.