Читать книгу Startup CXO - Matt Blumberg - Страница 29

For a startup, the most important part of cash management is just being able to accurately forecast it and not run out. But there are some basic things to keep in mind as you scale:

 Parking money for low yield. Although it is almost never a good idea to chase yield, and increasingly difficult in 2021, you can sometimes put excess cash in a money market or a very safe and liquid vehicle that provides essentially the same safety as cash but provides a bit of income. And it is very important to be aligned with the Board on the philosophy and operationally of how you are approaching cash management.

 Cash reconciliation. Performing a bank reconciliation to match the cash balances on the balance sheet to the bank account is a helpful control early on to keep an eye on different types of expenses, bank fees, and in transit payments, collections, and outstanding checks. Over time some of these numbers can be material and if you are not doing a reconciliation, you may receive some surprises.

 International funding. Companies that start to expand out of the US into other countries for sales and marketing will need to fund these operations by sending money to those entities to cover payroll and other expenses. It's important to consider timing and how much cash to leave in the foreign bank accounts, which will vary based on your business dynamics and foreign bank rules. Depending on how you are accounting for revenue recognition and customer billing, you may also have to build in sophisticated transfer pricing agreements and corporate business unit dividends in order to optimize your cash. Some countries can be challenging when trying to get cash back to your US accounts.

 Debt after financing. Commercial banks that market to venture‐backed companies are most likely to offer a debt facility, both a term loan or revolver, right after you have closed an equity fundraising. You might feel that this is a time when you don't need more cash, so you'll dismiss the revolver since it adds the expense and hassle of debt. But don't dismiss it too quickly because there are some scenarios where this is a good time to add a line to the business to start to build the relationship with the commercial banks and have some cash to cover any cash balance volatility. That being said, you shouldn't add debt just because you can, so you'll want to support the cost and complexity of a debt facility with clear operating reasons.

 Cash controls. In the early days there are usually not enough people to install proper controls around cash. But as you scale, you should consider putting in controls so no one person is able to send money outside the company or pay for personal expenses without some oversight. There are many, many examples of relatively small‐scale theft in small companies. For example, you will want to ensure that the person who enables the corporate card payments doesn't approve their own credit card usage. In one story from my early days (before I was on the Finance team), the accounts payable accountant ran up charges on car services and shopping on their corporate card and then paid off the card without any oversight. One easy thing you can do is have the people who are able to create wires be unable to approve them, and vice versa. Or you can put in a control so that wires/checks over a certain amount require two signatures. Bank reconciliation is also helpful to have in place to ensure some oversight.

 Cash burn. It is also useful to have a clear understanding of cash burn and cash runway. I have used metrics like months of payroll or months of last month cash burn as metrics for cash runway. In addition, it is also helpful to include in cash forecasts known large cash variability. Some examples include early in the calendar year payroll which will have more payroll taxes than end‐of‐year payrolls, new office space expansion, seasonality around billing and collections and large vendor annual payment cycles.