Business leaders rely on accounting data such as profit and calculated costs as a guide to whether they are making money. Should they?
Accounting was designed to report financial performance not model cash flow. Accruals can disconnect cash flow from the timing and extent to which it occurs. Statements of cash flow do not provide insight into what was bought and how efficiently it was used. Costs and profits are not absolute, they change based on the model you use to calculate them.
To manage cash, you must manage what you buy and how effectively you use it. The largest expenditure for most companies is capacity; space, labor, materials, equipment, and technology. Unless you model and manage capacity effectively, you will not achieve the cash flow results you seek.
This book introduces capacity management, describes cash flow dynamics, and offers ideas about how to manage each both. After reading it, you will be able to see, understand, and manage cash flow as never before.
Keywords
Accounting, Activity based costing, Activity cost, Average costing, Break-even, Capacity, Capacity accounting, Capacity cost, Capacity management, Cash, Cash flow, Cash management, Constraint, Cost, Cost accounting, Cost allocation, Cost assignment, Cost curve, Costing, Cost improvement, Cost management, Cost reduction, Costs, Customer profitability, Demand, Demand management, Dynamic capacity, Economic costs, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Explicit cost dynamics, Goldratt, Input capacity, Isocost, Isocost curve, Just-in-time, Lean, Lean accounting, Management accounting, Managerial accounting, Metrics, Operational improvement, Optimization, Output capacity, Performance, Performance improvement, Performance management , Process costing, Process design, Process Improvement, Process optimization, Product costing, Product profitability, Productivity, Profit, Return on investment, ROI, Service costing, Service profitability, Six sigma, Standard costing, Static Capacity, Theory of Constraints, Throughput accounting, Total quality management, Unit profit, WACA, Worth, Worth and capacity analysis