No matter what type of business you run, you can’t do it successfully without having a handle on your cash flow. At least not for very long. One of the troublesome parts of dealing with balance sheets and working capital is that expenses are unpredictable, especially if your organization is in a growth phase. Your day-to-day expenses don’t occur evenly, and even if they did, bills don’t come in or come due at even increments.

Every project manager deals with financials on some level: planning the project budget is the project manager’s responsibility, after all. But financial project managers live and breathe it. Let’s take a deep dive into exactly what finance project managers do and the skills they need to succeed.

When it comes to understanding future cash flow, there is no crystal ball — but there are plenty of major clues hiding in your data. Cash flow forecasting or the accounts receivable forecasting process is the method most businesses use to predict future payments and ultimately profitability.

The shift toward product-focused business models has sparked a major demand for product project management within agencies. And in fact, Gartner projects that 40% of large enterprises are moving toward product-centric delivery to drive innovation and commercialization. Agencies working with early-stage founders (where every penny and second counts) need a more adaptable and fluid approach that balances product vision and startup agility.

Computing pioneer Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” As an agency in charge of developing, launching, and marketing new products, each new product development process is an opportunity for you to mold the future. It’s also a process where a lot can potentially go wrong.

Deadlines are much like taxes — inevitable, stressful, and often dreaded. You may be all too familiar with the feeling of scrambling to meet client deadlines, working long hours, and drinking one too many cups of coffee. But missed deadlines can damage your agency’s reputation, affect future business, and ultimately impact your bottom line. Yet, despite the high stakes, it’s common for project teams to struggle with keeping track of tasks, managing priorities, and meeting deadlines.

Financial professionals rely on financial planning tools and software to work efficiently and accurately. Some of these tools are as old as the PC itself, while a new generation of financial services tools is also competing for your attention. But with so many of these tools offering wide-ranging, overlapping feature sets, choosing the right mix of tools is a time-consuming process for investment advisors.

It’s time to say farewell to nasty billing surprises and hello to more financial control. Introducing Time Approvals, our latest feature that will ensure you get the final say over your team’s time for the ultimate in accurate client billing. Take comfort in knowing that there are guardrails in place to protect your time data and billing details. Follow these four steps to work through the entire process, from setup to approval.

Your accountants and CPAs have better things to do than fiddling around with invoices and calculating billable hours. …But you also need to get paid. Is spending hours on billing and payroll just a necessary evil in the accounting field? Or is there a better way? Time and billing software promises to solve this problem, introducing automation and real-time tracking to your accounting and billing workflows.

Finance is a funny thing, isn’t it? On the one hand, the industry boasts some of the largest, most well-funded businesses in the U.S., U.K., and the world. Transactions so large that the average person can’t comprehend are the norm. But, on the other hand, day-to-day life at companies in the industry includes many challenges familiar to those in less lofty professions.