Understand the Ninsaúde Apolo's cash flow

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Cash flow is an important tool for any venture, including for medical clinics. Because it is considered the x-ray of finance, the main objective of cash flow is to assist the administrator in keeping the health of his business always up to date, so it is necessary to understand how this tool works.

When we talk about cash flow, we refer to a management tool that represents the movement of entries and exits of money in a certain period in the company. Despite today's technology, a large number of people still control their cash flow through Excel spreadsheets or even with paper and pen in a notebook, but certainly, the best way to analyze your business data is by using a clinical management system.

In the Ninsaúde Apolo clinic system, cash flow is already part of the native system features, so to use it just make the release of your receipts and payments so that the system itself makes the calculation not only of what has already been done but also of the future expected balance. That done, the only thing you will need to do is analyze and interpret this data.

Before we continue, we need to ask: Do you already know our system Ninsaúde Apolo for health clinics? The health software Ninsaúde Apolo has an agile and complete schedule, personalized electronic medical records for each specialty, and with legal validity, teleconsultation, financial control, and much more. Schedule a demo or try the Ninsaúde Apolo clinic's software right now!

Where do the cash flow values come from?

Every venture has accounts payable and accounts receivable, and both must be registered to analyze profits and losses. As you make receipts and expenses in the clinic's financial expenses, these values will automatically appear in the cash flow. Therefore, we will have the following items:

  • Receipts - Values received from patient consultations, and procedures made at the clinic, among others.
  • Payments - amounts paid to your material suppliers, employee salaries, health professional's commission, as well as fixed expenses such as rent, energy, internet, etc.

In the Ninsaúde Apolo clinic system, all receipts and payments must be released on the Finances menu at the Subsunu Titles. In titles, on the new button, you can choose which one of the two types of title you want to launch (receipt or payment) and you can still define whether that title will be unique, installment, or recurring.

Recurring titles are titles that will be repeated for a time determined by the user or an indefinite period, therefore you can use this option for the launch of fixed expenses or receipts of procedures packages, therapy, and physical therapy, among other types of recurring services. Thus, the amounts related to the pending recurrences and values of any other future salaries will appear in the cash flow in what we call the expected balance, that is, a prediction of your balance when these securities are paid.

When launching a receipt or payment, some fields must be completed containing information about the title to be released. Some information is mandatory, as is the case of the category, type of payment, bank account, due date, and branch. Check out why they are required and what they will represent in their cash flow.

  • Category - Categories are financial classifications that make it possible to understand how your company earns the most or where it has its greatest expenses. In the case of clinics, you can create reception categories such as "Consultations", and "Surgeries", among others, in addition to being able to classify categories into subcategories, that is, a smaller category within a larger category.
  • Type of payment - Despite not having great relevance within the cash flow, informing the type of payment is essential when launching a title. It is through this field that you can inform whether the receipt or payment was made by card, cash, or any other means.
  • Bank account - When making a receipt, you must inform which bank account it will enter, and in the same way, when entering an expense, you must inform where the amount to make the payment will come from. If you have more than one bank account, in the cash flow of the Ninsaúde Apolo management software, you can view the values of all accounts together or filter by specific accounts, to view them separately.
  • Due date - This is the deadline for a payment to be settled. If payment is pending or overdue, the amount will go into the expected cash flow balance. If the title is already paid, it will be added to the balance of what has already been paid, but always taking into account the date on which it was settled. In the cash flow, it is also possible to filter by date, so you can choose a specific period (within at least four months) to view the progress of your finances by due dates.
  • Branch - The branch refers to the physical place of care. For example, your clinic may have a headquarter branch and another branch placed at another address, therefore, when entering an expense or receipt, you will be able to inform which of the branches it concerns. In addition, in the cash flow you can also choose whether you want to view values referring only to a specific branch or all, and to choose a branch, select it in the filters.

How to interpret the cash flow values?

Firstly, it is important to know that cash flow is based not only on due dates but also on payment dates, that is, the date on which a title was paid off. Therefore, if the title expired in January but you only paid in February, the amount corresponding to it will appear in the February balance, since the receipt was made in that period.

Now let's analyze a cash flow and all the values that make up it. In the filters option, the period from 02/01/2023 to 06/30/2023 was informed, and it is important to say that the tool is being accessed at the end of February. Therefore, the February amounts, as they are all settled, will already be entered as a realized balance, while the values of the following months (which are still pending) will need to be analyzed in the expected balance. See the example below:

Now you will check where each of the values shown in the cash flow of Ninsaúde Apolo came from and why they change according to the filters or visualization mode.

Accumulated balance

The accumulated balance, as its name suggests, is the equivalent of the entire amount accumulated in a given period. Note that in the cash flow, two accumulated balance values appear: one that is in italics on the left of the screen, in parentheses and another that is below each month of the selected period, on the right side of the screen.

The accumulated balance between parentheses is considered your opening balance, that is, the amount you have when starting the period entered in the filter. When you start using the Ninsaúde Apolo management software, you must inform the amount you have in each of your registered bank accounts. The sum of the values of all these bank accounts will result in your accumulated balance when you start using the system.

It is important to remember that, depending on the period you enter in the search filter, the initial value may change, after all, as you enter receipts and payments, in certain periods you can start with more or less money in the account. In the example above, the period applied to the filter was 02/01/2023 to 06/30/2023, which means that the clinic started the month of February with $13,340,736.29 accumulated.

Regarding the accumulated balance of each month (on the right side of the screen), this symbolizes how much the clinic has accumulated in that specific period. As shown in the example, in February we have an accumulated balance of $ 13,341,086.29. This value is the result of the initial accumulated balance added to the balance for the period (which we will discuss below), that is, 13,341,086.29 + 300= 13,341,386.29.

It is important to remember that the system also allows viewing the expected balance, that is, a forecast of what the amount accumulated by the clinic will be when the outstanding bills are settled. In the example in the image above, the visualization refers to the accumulated balance of what has already been done, which means that these titles are already paid off.

Balance of the period

The balance for the period is what remains of your receipts and payments. Depending on the amount of income and expenses, this balance may be negative, and one of the cash flow objectives is precisely to prevent this from happening, after all, it is a tool that makes it possible to control your finances, showing where you have had your biggest expenses and where your biggest revenues come from.

In the example below, in February the clinic's balance was $350. Note that below this balance all receipts and payments for the period are listed. There was a total of $500 received, while the total payments made in February were $150. Therefore, 500-150 = 350, that is, the balance for the period.

Expected Balance

When pressing the Format button (on the right side of the screen) we have the option to change the visualization of the values, being able to choose between the realized and expected. In the examples above we have already demonstrated the realized balance, where positive values are highlighted in green and negative values are in red. In the expected format, all values are highlighted in orange.

The forecasted balance format allows the administrator to know what the clinic's balance will be once all unpaid bills are paid off. Check out the example below, where this time we use the period from 03/01/2023 to 06/30/2023 in the filter:

Note that now, while we are viewing the predicted balance, the initial accumulated balance has changed, and this is due to the dates that we changed in the filter. Therefore, the initial accumulated balance is now $13,371,070.89.

Another change was related to the accumulated balance for March: in viewing what was done, the accumulated balance for that month was $13,371,370.89, but now that we change it to the expected balance, this amount is changed to $13,371,570.89. This amount of $13,371,570.89 is the result of the following calculation: the initial accumulated balance (13,371,070.89) was added to the balance for the period (500).

But, in March, what is the origin of those $ 13.341.436,29 that is expected? After all, following the previous logic, the account does not add up. It turns out that in this case, you need to ignore the value of $ 13,371,070.89 because, as you are viewing a month ahead of the initial month, this is no longer your initial balance, so you will have to take into account the accumulated balance of the previous month.

Therefore, the accumulated balance for March is the result of what was accumulated in February (13,340,936.29) added to its balance for the period (500.00). In this way, we have 13,340,936.29 + 500 = 13.341.436,29 (accumulated balance for March).

It is important to know that even though the accumulated balance is at the top, it is always the last value to be updated, as this balance depends on the balance for the period, which, in turn, depends on the clinic's receipts and payments.

We need to remind you that it is not necessary for you to perform the calculations shown in this article, after all, the system itself performs everything automatically, just by analyzing the data. The purpose of this article is for you to understand where these numbers came from and thus be able to understand even better how the system cash flow calculation for Ninsaúde Apolo clinics works.

So, did you like the tips? Keep following the blog for more content like this. Are you a healthcare professional but still don't use management software? Get to know the system for Ninsaúde Apolo clinics.