Finance Module

Finance Module

The Finance module extends the Accounting module with forward-looking financial tools: cash flow planning, budget management, cost center tracking, and forecasting.

Finance vs. Accounting

• Accounting — Records what has already happened (historical transactions, P&L)
• Finance — Plans for what should happen (budgets, targets, forecasts)

Both modules share the chart of accounts and transaction data. Finance adds a planning layer on top.

Cash Flow Planning

Project expected inflows and outflows over a future period:

1. Go to Finance → Cash Flow
2. Set the planning period (next 30, 60, or 90 days)
3. The system pre-populates expected inflows from active subscriptions, recurring orders, and outstanding invoices
4. Add manual projections for expected expenses (rent, supplier payments, payroll)
5. The resulting chart shows your projected daily/weekly cash position

Budget Management

• Create monthly or annual budgets per expense category (Marketing, Operations, Payroll, etc.)
• Actual spending is tracked against budget automatically as transactions are recorded
• Budget variance alerts notify you when a category exceeds its budget by a configurable threshold (e.g., 10%)

Cost Centers

Cost centers let you split income and expenses by department or project for profitability analysis:

• Create cost centers under Finance → Cost Centers (e.g., Online Store, Retail POS, Marketing, HRM)
• Assign transactions to a cost center when recording manual entries
• POS sales, warehouse expenses, and payroll costs can be auto-assigned by location or department
• Run a Cost Center P&L report to see which parts of the business are profitable

Financial Forecasting

The Finance module uses your historical sales trend to project future revenue:

• Select a projection period (3, 6, or 12 months)
• Choose a growth assumption (conservative, moderate, aggressive) or enter a custom percentage
• Compare projected revenue against budget targets
• Export the forecast as CSV or PDF for external presentations