Cash is KING …
And Queen and the Whole Royal Court
If you are running a small business no one needs to tell you that Cash is King.
You live it every day as you try to collect income faster than you spend on goods and services. Good Luck with that.
I am writing about Cash Flow on B2B Buzz for the second time recently. The first time was prompted by Square’s announcement of a business bank account. This time it was prompted by a re-connection with a great entrepreneur, BC Krishna now of Centime perviously of MineralTree.
These truth bombs come from the Centime website and as a former controller of a small business, I can say I agree 100%
Your customers pay later than you’d like.
Payroll is due next week.
The bills never stop.
Every business grapples with cash flows.
The fact that Centime understands these key points for every SMB comes from the fact that BC Krishna has been in the AR/AP for SMB game for a long time and has a depth of understanding of the issues and solutions beyond most people I know.
In my work I track Fintechs by category and can say that this “CFO Stack” or Treasury Tools and Corporate Finance category is growing. I had previously come up with this framework for an SMB’s finance workings:
In the category of Accounts Receivable I have looked at the following Fintechs:
- Routable (great founder and team)
- Invoiced (obviously a great name in this category)
In the category of Accounts Payable I have looked at:
- Snap AP (great team)
- Tipalti (closer to the Enterprise end of the category than SMB)
- MineralTree (BC’s old company)
This in addition to the others that cover both sides of the receivables coin such as Paystand that is a B2B payments company but they claim to automate your receivables such that your DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) will come down by 60%.
Autobooks is another one that covers both sides of the equation and three things stand out about them
- They are focused…no OBSESSED with helping SMBs
- They also focus on banks as a channel to SMBs
- They have quite a few partnerships in the community bank ecosystem
With the automation of AR and AP adding value for small business operators it is important to remember that we started this with a focus on Cash.
Centime focuses on helping SMBs make decisions on:
Who to Pay
When to Pay
How Much to Pay
And How to Pay
I really like this focus as many SMBs have unsophisticated accounting teams and they need these insights to make sure they can make that cash last. It seems like Centime is going to be the virtual Treasury Department for the SMBs that have accounting teams.
If you don’t understand the the difference between Accounting and Treasury or Finance these definitions from cfi.org help.
Accounting: ‘Accounting is the recording, maintaining, and reporting of a company’s financial records.’
Finance: (Treasury) ‘Their job is to create value by managing capital in a way that earns higher than expected risk-adjusted returns.’
Really Centime sits in the middle of this beautiful finance flower covering all the key pieces of Treasury and making your SMB’s accounting department a key strategic advantage.
Centime delivers the following key attributes that any SMB owner would value. Personally the ability to forecast cash flow for up to 26 weeks is the one I would want above all others.
- Aggregated multi-bank cash and balance reporting
- Automated, real-time rolling cash flow forecast: 2–26 weeks
- Customizable forecasts
- Low cash alerts
- KPIs to monitor Cash Flow performance
Centime’s platform is really about adding Treasury functions normally reserved for bigger companies but now available to your $5M annual revenue business. Centime additionally allows you to apply for new credit to pay suppliers. A real time saver when cash is tight.
The Centime platform features a risk rating for your customers and suppliers. I really like the idea of being able to quickly look at my partners and customers to determine if I need to be concerned.
What is a Centime you ask…”Centime is French for “cent”, and is used in English as the name of the fraction currency in several Francophone countries.” Source: Wikipedia, which I donated $50 to today and encourage you to do the same.
I know I am going to be watching the Centime story unfold because it is a rare combination to have a successful entrepreneur doing it again, hitting on a key care about of SMBs, a team that knows how and has built great products.
Plus: I can not imagine my Community Bank friends are not dying to get their hands on a solution like this to really add value to their SMB customers.
