Unconventional Cash Flow

  

Categories: Accounting

Your cash flow is a rebel. It plays by his own rules. It doesn’t listen to society. It’s an unconventional cash flow.

A conventional cash flow pattern involves cash going in one direction overtime. You might have negative cash flow in the first year of doing business, but once you turn positive, it stays positive. One change in direction...that’s the usual situation: the conventional cash flow pattern.

An unconventional cash flow pattern is more volatile. Sometimes, your company posts positive cash flow. Sometimes, it's negative. It bounces back and forth between plus and minus...more than one change in direction.

You started your company in 2014. You had negative cash flow in 2014 and 2015. It switched to positive in 2016 and has been positive since...in the plus territory for 2017, 2018, and 2019. That situation represents a conventional pattern.

Your sister started her business at the same time. It had negative cash flow in 2014, but quickly jumped into positive territory for 2015 (you really had to listen to some insufferable bragging that Thanksgiving). But (and you pointed this out at the next Fourth of July picnic), her business slipped back into the negative in 2016. It was positive again in 2017 and 2018. But negative again in 2019. That situation represents an unconventional pattern.

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Finance allah shmoop what is cash flow versus earnings Okay

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you think profits or profits right Well not unless you

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spell it P r o p h e t s

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accounting profits and there are also cash profits and the

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hundred million dollars knowing that it will be worth twenty

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million dollars in scrap value in just four years Well

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for puppy and kitty tech is still high will drone

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sales or steady producing cash profits of fifty million bucks

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a year each year into the foreseeable future but stated

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earnings and cash flows here are very different In the

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first year when the factory was built the company lost

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big cash money because it had to write one hundred

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Million dollar check to the builder of the factory Yes

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it made fifty million in profits but that year it

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lost fifty million dollars in cash Luckily it had no

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debt and it had one hundred twenty five million dollars

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in the bank Well that bank account went down to

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just twenty five million when they wrote one hundred million

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dollar check But it gradually filled back up to seventy

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five million by the time that year was done fifty

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million of profits and that fifty million in cash Yeah

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that that helps that floated right back in there Okay

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so the cash that year was volatile It was a

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hundred twenty five million to start But then i went

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down to twenty five million after the factory purchase than

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end up a year later with fifty million added to

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their coffers and gas profits from operation leaving them with

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seventy five million bucks in the bank got all that

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profits perspective and a cash flow perspective on the notion

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of profit Simply put it isn't fair for the company

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Tohave a view that the one hundred million dollars factory

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as an expense should all hit the profits line all

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in one year as if they bore the burden of

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all that factory cost in one year and then showing

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it is being worthless in years Two three four and

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maybe beyond In fact the company doing proper accounting depreciates

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that factory in value to the tune of twenty million

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dollars a year for for four years until it will

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then sell it for scrap for twenty million bucks So

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that hit to the company in the first year should

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in cash That's an accounting change of assessing twenty million

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in expenses not one hundred million how's that work well

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the decline in value of that hundred million dollars takes

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five years And it looks like this But in your

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won the company loses one hundred million dollars in cash

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but gains a factory Confused Good Okay well let's zoom

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forward to your floor The company again made fifty million

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dollars in cash profits but it will show earnings of

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only thirty million Why Well because proper accounting using straight

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lined appreciation of that hundred million dollar factory properly shows

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its cash profitability So what A thirty percent tax rate

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