Make a cash journal

The cashier needs to register the cash journal, which is financial common sense, but in the cross-border industry, because there are too many cards and the payers may be different, it is easy to miss. To achieve financial accuracy, the first thing to do is to grasp the integrity of the cash journal!

Some sellers’ cashiers are the boss or the boss’s wife, which is fine. The problem is that sometimes the boss or the boss’s wife does not notify the finance department or register after paying, and the money "quietly disappears" in the financial statements.

Some companies have never registered credit card bills, resulting in a large amount of missing expenses.

Cross-border e-commerce usually has many payment channels, including public accounts, boss’s cards, relatives’ cards, P cards, Lianlian, and PayPal. The income and expenditure of all these accounts need to be registered one by one. For example, if you don’t register your own bank account, you don’t know what you paid afterwards. For third-party payment tools such as Payoneer and PayPal, the type of each payment is generally written clearly, so you can guide the flow once a month.

Make good operating statements

It is important to provide the boss with a true operating statement of the company. This is not the traditional three major accounting statements, but the management statements that the boss can understand and see clearly. The management statements of each company should be tailored and form a system.

For example, there is a company-wide report every month, listing the revenue, cost, platform fee, freight, management fee, etc. of each platform or each operation group this month. In addition, there are Amazon operating statements and eBay operating statements, listing the sales revenue, refunds, platform fees, procurement costs, first-leg freight, etc. of each platform by site, account, or even order.

The frequency, granularity, and dimension of the management report need to be formulated after the finance department communicates with the seller boss, operation and other departments. The finance department should not work behind closed doors.

Calculate inventory well

Some cross-border e-commerce finance only focuses on the calculation of the profit and loss statement, and does not pay attention to the calculation of inventory.

In fact, in the cross-border e-commerce industry where there are few fixed assets, inventory accounts for a large proportion of assets, which can reach 50%-80%. If inventory is not caught, it is equivalent to losing an important part of financial control.

For monthly inbound, in-transit, and outbound data, the finance department must require each department to provide data in a timely manner or obtain it from ERP. Of course, in our industry, it is very difficult to achieve very accurate inventory accounting, but the most basic thing is to correctly carry forward costs, transfer in-transit in a timely manner, and regularly check physical inventory or platform inventory data.

Make a capital budget

The so-called capital budget is to predict the cash inflow and outflow of the company in the future. The boss can clearly see whether the company's funds are tight and whether some projects have enough money to carry out.

The reality is that some sellers usually pay when they have money, and they are stuck when they don't have money. They don't know whether they will have enough money in a few months. Some sellers like to expand new projects, new platforms, and new products, but they don't actually understand the cash flow situation of their own company, and they may step into the pit if they are not careful.

Therefore, it would be very helpful for such enterprises to prepare a full-year budget at the beginning of the year and update it quarterly or monthly.

Participate in inventory management

We have seen that some sellers think that inventory management is about procurement, warehouses, and operations, and finance is just keeping accounts. In fact, it is not.

Some time ago, I communicated with the financial director of a big seller. He said that he currently "focuses on inventory management and outbound management, and neglects financial accounting" in inventory accounting. No matter how hard the finance department works to calculate the inventory, it is at most a "hindsight". It is better to control the front-end business process.

For example, they require procurement and warehouses to promptly warehouse the received inventory, logistics must promptly enter the receiving status of sea and air transportation in the system, and after-sales must promptly warehouse the customer returns that have been re-listed in the FBA warehouse. Some are ERP setting problems, and some are manual operation problems. No matter what the problem is, someone needs to manage the operation of the entire system. The finance department, which has mastered the data of various departments, has taken on the heavy responsibility.