374. Insights: The importance of cashflow for SMEs - Live at Xerocon

Xerocon crowd picks forecasting as small business cash flow priority

Cash flow is the beating heart of a small business, and this live Xerocon show tested which part of it matters most. Xero's partnerships with TransferWise and iwoca show the platform moving payments and working capital into accounting software. The debate winner was forecasting, because lending and spending choices both depend on knowing what comes next.

Takeaways

• Xero and TransferWise launched UK bill payments. Pay with TransferWise is TransferWise's first domestic UK bill pay product, built into Xero's bill process. Xero handles about 7m UK bills a month and bought Hubdoc and invested in AI first. Customers asked for it, and it saves hours of batch reconciliation.
• TransferWise expects business-led volume to grow. Nilan Peiris of TransferWise can imagine 50% of its volume starting with a business and flowing through its back end. Xero gives that route scale, with half a million UK subscribers and 10,000 accounting partners.
• Xero wants working capital inside its platform. iwoca received £10m from the RBS remedies fund, which gave away £863m in total. It plans a loan with no personal guarantee and a product called iwoca Pay. Xero sees its customers and 800 plus apps as a route to new credit.
• Digital tools are making cash flow control accessible. Small businesses can now open a GoCardless account in minutes, a job once held by a few high street banks. Tools such as Soldo and Receipt Bank advance spending control. Still, about 50% of US business payment volume uses transfers and checks.
• Audience voted forecasting the top cash flow priority. Hannah Dawson of FUTRLI and Nikki Adams of Ad Valorem won by arguing that lending and spending decisions need a forecast. They called forecasting a sat nav for owners, who need what-if scenarios and tools that prioritize actions.

The four cases for cash flow

• Team spending, Carlo Gualandri of Soldo and Frankie Kay of Farnell Clarke, said money must be spent to make money, so control and education start on day one.
• Team payments, Pranav Sood of GoCardless and Jonathan Bareham of Raedan, called payments the engine of a business. Automatic collection removes the stress of chasing late payers.
• Team lending, Anil Stocker of MarketFinance and Lauren Harvey of Full Stop, said revenue is vanity and cash flow is reality. A startup selling on Amazon waits ninety days to be paid, and finance bridges that gap.
• Team forecasting said the word is often treated as dirty and used only for funding events. The concept is hard for owners to grasp, yet no lending or spending decision works without a forecast.