industry
Real Estate, Hospitality & Construction

Revamping the 52-week cash forecast for a vacation rental company​

Key metrics:
  • Developed a simplified and precise 52-week cash flow model
  • Developed a technical roadmap to improve accuracy within the EPM suite​​​
Value levers pulled:
  • Business intelligence & big data analytics
  • Budgeting & forecasting optimization
  • Cash & liquidity forecasting

Picture this...

You’re a $2.5B international vacation rental management company requiring greater visibility into your 52-week cash flow forecast to better understand liquidity and anticipate potential revolver drawdowns. But there are complicating factors, including large transaction volumes, siloed analytics tools across the organization, and turnover in the finance department. ​

You turn to Accordion.

You task us with the development and implementation of a cash flow model that improves accuracy and reduces complexity. In close partnership with your FP&A, IT, and accounting teams, we work to understand the shortcomings of the existing cash flow model and meet with management to align on key metrics and assumptions. Additionally, we:

  • Develop methodology to forecast collections based on reservation volume, check-in timing, and various contra-inflows driven by millions of unique revenue transactions.
  • Identify and transform data from teams across the organization to improve visibility into cash flow drivers and allow for more granular forecast assumptions.
  • Compile and standardize master data tables for dimensions including weekly calendar, products, P&L categorizations, etc.
  • Guide the internal IT team in developing the SQL Server back-end to automate the accumulation of reservation and related data, along with its subsequent transmission and transformation into the model.
  • Align cash flow with budgeted P&L to identify potential liquidity shortages and prepare for upcoming board meetings.
  • Design variance analyses between cash flow forecast, budget, treasury actuals, and data from your systems.

Your value is enhanced.

You achieve your key objective of developing a simplified and precise 52-week cash flow model and have significantly better visibility into cash flow drivers and causes of actual vs. forecast variance. The model serves as your source of truth for projecting future revolver drawdowns and reconciling performance against the budget. We also develop a technical roadmap to improve accuracy with moderate additional complexity and integrate the model directly into your new EPM suite.

Enhanced value:

You reap multiple benefits, including:

  • ​​​Developed a simplified and precise 52-week cash flow model
  • Developed a technical roadmap to improve accuracy within the EPM suite