Payment Calendar for Manufacturers: A €1,700 Gap on Friday Is Visible on Monday

The company is fictional. Every action in Bimp is a real product feature.

A payment calendar for manufacturers shows a cash gap several days ahead, provided customer orders, supplier orders and payroll all feed into it. Below is fictional Voltcrest, whose calendar showed a gap of €1,700 for Friday on Monday, while the finance manager usually noticed it on Thursday.

On Friday the company has to pay payroll and two suppliers. The money is on the accounts, and it almost matches the sum of the payments. Almost.

Why does the director learn about the gap on Thursday?

Voltcrest (a fictional company) makes power supply units and has 40 people. Components come from suppliers on deferred terms, and several large customers pay late. Payments live in three places: supplier contracts, customer orders and the finance manager’s spreadsheet.

In this setup a negative balance becomes visible only after the statements are reconciled. On Thursday the finance manager puts the picture together and goes to the director.

On Friday the company must pay €10,000 of payroll, €6,500 to the first supplier and €3,200 to the second. In total 10,000 + 6,500 + 3,200 = €19,700. The accounts hold €15,700 (€9,900 in the main bank and €5,800 in the second). The customer Brightwave is due to pay €2,300. That gives 15,700 + 2,300 - 19,700 = -€1,700.

The director has four days to fix this. But he finds out with one day left.

How do you build a payment calendar for manufacturers from the documents you already have?

You do not need a separate planning spreadsheet in Bimp. The calendar is assembled from documents the company creates anyway. Each step below has a help page.

Step 1. Bank accounts and statements. Company accounts are created in the “Banks/Bank accounts” directory (Bank accounts and cash desks). On the “Integration” tab of the account card, choose the integrator and paste the token issued by the bank (Client-bank). Without automatic exchange, save the statement as an Excel file (up to 30 days) and upload it in Finance → Client-bank with the data source “From file” (Importing a bank statement from a file).

Step 2. Customer orders. In the Brightwave order for €2,300, tick “Add to payment calendar” in the “Payment” block and specify the deferral and the date of receipt. The same is done for the GridNorth order of €5,000, paid on Wednesday of next week (Customer order).

Step 3. Supplier orders. In the two component orders, tick the same switch. The deferral “Full” lets you set one payment date, and “Partial” splits the payment across several dates. The first supplier gets €6,500 on Friday and the second €3,200, also on Friday (Supplier order).

Step 4. Payroll. In the “Salary accrual” document, open the “Payment” block, select “Add to payment calendar” and specify the “Payment date” and the “Payment amount”: €10,000 on Friday (Salary accrual). If the document has not been accrued in advance, add the payment in the calendar by hand: open the day, click Add, choose “Expenses”, the counterparty and the amount (Payment calendar).

What does the owner see in the calendar on Monday?

Open Finance → Payment calendar. Days with receipts are green and days with expenses are yellow. At the bottom of the Friday cell is the balance on the accounts, and when planned expenses are larger, a negative “Gap” amount is shown instead.

Let us recalculate Friday the way the calendar does.

Check: 15,700 + 2,300 = 18,000, while 10,000 + 6,500 + 3,200 = 19,700. The difference is 18,000 - 19,700 = -€1,700.

A click on a day opens all the payments of that date, so you can see which documents make up the negative. The “Income” and “Expenses” filters leave only the side you need on screen.

How do you close the gap while you still have four days?

There are two ways. The director checks both in the calendar without waiting for Thursday.

First way: move a payment. In the second supplier’s order, change the “Payment date” from Friday to Wednesday of next week. The supplier has to agree, but the negotiation can happen on Monday, four days before the payment. Friday then comes to 15,700 + 2,300 - 10,000 - 6,500 = €1,500. On Wednesday it is 1,500 + 5,000 - 3,200 = €3,300, if GridNorth pays its €5,000 on time. There are notionally no other payments on those days.

Second way: bring a receipt forward. If GridNorth pays €3,000 before Friday, the result is 15,700 + 2,300 + 3,000 - 19,700 = €1,300. That is a call to a customer instead of a conversation with a supplier. The director takes concrete figures from the calendar: which document, what amount and for which day. With such figures the talk with the customer about early payment is short, while a talk with the supplier about a delay would take longer.

You can combine both. Move the smaller payment and also remind the customer about the receipt, and Friday closes with room to spare.

How does a bank fact get into the calendar and the report?

When Brightwave pays, the transaction arrives in the statement. It is allocated with the “Income” button: the system creates a “Customer payment” document. After it is linked to the order, the circle in the allocation column turns green (Allocating the statement). Payments to suppliers are created based on the order, and they close the debt in the calendar (Supplier payment).

On Friday morning the “Cash balance” report for that date shows the fact: €12,200 in the main bank (9,900 + 2,300) and €5,800 in the second, €18,000 in total (Cash balance). The report takes only posted balances and ignores planned payments. So it makes sense to keep the calendar and the report open side by side: the first gives the plan for the days ahead, the second the actual sum on the accounts.

How long does the weekly calendar check take?

At Voltcrest it was introduced as a rule: every Monday the director and the finance manager look at the calendar two weeks ahead. It takes 15 to 20 minutes on one screen. First they turn on the “Expenses” filter and look for days with a gap. Then they open each such day and see the documents that form it.

If a day has only one large payment, they move it or bring a receipt forward. If there are many expenses and the gap is small, they look at which payments are not critical by date. In the fictional company the last category consisted of suppliers with deferrals of 14 and 30 days.

The calendar is as honest as the documents are complete. An order where “Add to payment calendar” is not ticked will not appear in it. So the buyer and the sales manager tick the box as soon as they create the order, and it takes seconds. A payment without a document, such as rent or a tax, is added by hand as one entry per month.

What does this give the company?

The gap is visible four days ahead instead of one. That is enough to agree terms with a supplier or remind a customer. On Thursday such an agreement almost never makes it in time.

Every decision has a number. The director moves €3,200 to Wednesday because he sees that €5,000 arrives on Wednesday. Without the calendar the same decision would be made blind.

Payments live in one place. The calendar is assembled from documents that managers, buyers and accounting create in their work, so the separate spreadsheet of the finance manager is not needed and its gap with reality disappears.

On the difference between profit in a report and money in the account, there is an example of a manufacturer’s P&L, which shows how to build the monthly summary. The financial features of Bimp are collected on the Finance page.

Scenario limits

The payment calendar shows only planned payments from documents and those entered by hand. It does not forecast sales and does not build “what if” scenarios. A payment is moved by changing the date in the document. Payroll gets into the calendar through the “Payment” block of the accrual or a manual entry, and this list of sources is worth checking on your version. The “Cash balance” report shows only the fact. The help articles behind the steps carry a verification status, so check the button names against your version of Bimp. Automatic exchange works with the banks supported by the Client-bank integration. For other banks the statement import by file remains.

Bimp is a cloud ERP for manufacturers, built in Ukraine, and the calendar in it is assembled from the same orders the company creates in its daily work.

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