Managing cash flow is rarely as simple as “money in, money out”- especially when your business lives in the middle. Whether you’re a nonprofit foundation acting as a pass-through for dozens of organizations, a rental agency balancing owners and tenants, or a loan manager handling complex collections, you’ve likely felt the weight of the “netting” process.
If your current month-end involves a 1,000-line spreadsheet and a hope that no one accidentally deleted a formula in row 452, this is for you.
The “Middleman” Dilemma
You’re in the business of being a “middleman”, where you are collecting cash and managing expenses for an external client. Maybe you have cash coming in from a property, have incurred expenses on its management and need to take its own service fees into account. In a perfect world, you’d simply pay the client the difference between the cash in and all the expenses and service fees or be able to generate an invoice if they still owe you. In many accounting systems, these two figures live in separate worlds (AP and AR), forcing you to manually reconcile them in external sheets.
Why spreadsheets are a “risky joy”
There is a certain freedom in a spreadsheet – the ability to change a number instantly or add a quick note. But for organizations at scale, that freedom becomes a liability.
- For Operations: You’re spending hours on manual entry, hoping human error doesn’t creep into the final invoice.
- For Finance Leaders: Your interim accounting is often “off” because the full effect of netting isn’t reflected on the balance sheet until the end of the month – or worse, the end of the year.
A Systematized Solution: The Netting IP
At Plative, we’ve developed a solution, a Suitelet, designed to bring these disparate threads together directly within your NetSuite system.
The process is straightforward: the system looks at everything you owe and everything you are owed within a specific period. It then determines the net difference and automatically creates a single bill or invoice for the remainder.
The Benefits of Staying “On-System”
- Audit Readiness: Instead of handing your auditor a folder full of manual Excel sheets, you have a clear, system-generated audit trail.
- Real-Time Visibility: You see the full picture of your liabilities and receivables as they happen, not just after a manual “true-up”.
- Operational Efficiency: It eliminates the “pay then get paid” inefficiency, keeping more cash where it belongs and reducing manual work.
Is Your Process Ready to Scale?
We’ll be the first to tell you that moving from a spreadsheet to a systematized process requires a shift in mindset. Spreadsheets offer infinite (and often dangerous) flexibility. A system brings rigidity, but with that rigidity comes reliability and scale.
If you’re managing four organizations, a spreadsheet might be fine. But if you’re managing hundreds of properties or thousands of loans, manual work isn’t just slowing you down – it’s holding your business back.
We’ve built the rubric, and we’ve done this before. We don’t believe in “one size fits all,” but we also don’t believe in reinventing the wheel when we’re already 80% of the way there.
Ready to see if our netting solution fits your business? Let’s talk.