THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBING
The Quintessential Technology Source for Corporate Financial Professionals
CFO Tech Outlook Weekly Brief
Be first to read the latest tech news, Industry Leader's Insights, and CIO interviews of medium and large enterprises exclusively from CFO Tech Outlook
Debra Robinson, PresidentMany years of Debra’s meticulous understanding of cash flow have gone into founding Centennial Revenue and building her Total Cash Clarity service. In her erstwhile company’s role as CEO, Debra had an unpleasant experience of having been embezzled by her own CFO. Few months into her next company, she again hit the roadblock for failing to manage cash flow. These personal experiences have propelled Debra to found the company that today stands at the forefront of revenue management consulting. The differentiator for Centennial Revenue is in Debra’s ability to analyze the business and the cash flow from the perspective of a CEO and a CFO; and not from a CPA’s perspective, who strives to reduce the bottom line to mitigate the tax liability.
When formulating strategies around cash flow, many companies fail to realize that the strategy for the current month bears no fruit. Why? The cash is already at play.
To that end, Debra and her team take a deep dive into the clients’ accounting books at the outset of the engagement, and develop robust strategies to limit liability, offset the debt, boost profit without disturbing the cash flow. Following the financial review, the client’s leadership is provided with the tools and the knowledge for making informed business decisions. Debra’s proactive strategy involves leveraging the last four month’s trends, combining the balance sheet and P&L statements and then looking eight months into the future. This gives client CEOs a 360-degree view of their financials, and a secure window of operation.
Since cash flow storms take several months to form, it takes proactive strategies to keep a cash crisis at bay
Spanning more than four months, the engagement process involves working in conjunction with the client’s CPA and a bookkeeper entrusted with controlling and maintaining the integrity of the financials. “Optimizing cash flow is to know what Cash on Hand Balance you should have on a monthly basis,” says Debra.
Debra cites the case of owners of a medical practice who had trouble paying themselves. From the investigation, she found that the accounting activities were managed inaccurately and the attitude was such that they agreed to buy whatever the vendor offered them. As usual, the client’s CPA filed the tax returns based on the inaccurate accounting information presented and executed the common financial strategy, as CPAs do, of minimizing the bottom line to mitigate the tax liability. In April, the owners were surprised to find a huge tax liability bill, as they didn’t have a proactive strategy in place. Serving as an outsourced CFO, Debra solved the puzzle in just 90 days by implementing her signature modelling and forecasting strategy and simultaneously educating the owners and their team on the best practices.
Debra is passionate about enabling CEOs and their teams with the power to plan, model, and forecast through the recent launch of her custom cash flow service including an online forecasting app, Total Cash ClarityTM, available on a subscription basis.
| Share this Article: Tweet |
Company
Centennial Revenue Management
Management
Debra Robinson, President
Description
Everyone is, after all, in business to make money. An Outsourced CFO from Centennial Revenue Management helps to do just that. They give an advocate to help manage and accurately project the long-term financial picture of the company and analyze financial data to maximize profitability and crate positive cash flow. They work along with the internal team to facilitate the financial and operational conversations to maximize the opportunities for employees to understand how they directly can affect increasing revenues or decreasing expenses by communicating the “important parts” of financials
