Cash flow and cash runway

What the Cash Flow view shows

Margin is the health of a job. Cash flow is the health of the week. A restoration business can be profitable on paper and still run short of cash, because the money you have earned is sitting in receivables, in work you have finished but not yet billed, and in the gap between when payroll is due and when a carrier pays. The Cash Flow view is where Verinode reads all of that in one place and shows you where the cash actually is, when it is coming, and what to do when a shortfall is on the horizon.

Verinode does not move your money or make the call for you. It reads the invoices, jobs, financials, and settings you already have, projects them forward, and lays out the options as clearly as a fractional COO would. You decide.

Where to find it

Open Margin from the sidebar at iq.verinode.ai/margin. Two places lead into cash:

• The Cash Runway gauge in the money-and-health band at the top of the page. It shows your projected days of runway as a single number.
• The Cash Flow tile, one of the tabs across the Margin card slider (Findings, Adjusters, Carriers, Pricing, Cost Structure, Margin by Type, Labor Burden, Cash Flow, Benchmarks).

Both open the same Cash Flow slide. Inside it, up to eight sub-tools stack top to bottom, each appearing only when you have the data to feed it. The rest of this article walks through every one.

The eight sub-tools

1. AR aging matrix

What it is. AR aging is money owed to you, sorted by how old it is. The older a receivable, the less likely it is to be paid in full and on time. This matrix breaks your unpaid receivables out by carrier and by age.

What you see. A header line reads how much is unpaid in total, across how many jobs and how many carriers, for example, "unpaid across 40 jobs · 6 carriers." Below it a table, one row per carrier, with these columns:

• Carrier, the carrier name, with its share of your total AR beside it (e.g. "22% of AR"). Unmatched rows read "Unknown carrier."
• Jobs, how many unpaid jobs sit under that carrier.
• 0–30d / 31–60d / 61–90d / 90+d, the unpaid dollars in each age bucket. A dash means nothing in that bucket. The 90+d column is bolded in red on the worst rows because that is the money most at risk.
• Total unpaid, the carrier's full outstanding balance.
• Carrier avg DTP, the average days-to-pay you have historically seen from that carrier, so a slow balance is read against that carrier's own norm rather than a generic standard.
• Risk, a tier label: Watch, Concern, or Critical. A row goes Critical (and highlights in Ember Red) when a large share of its unpaid dollars has aged into the 90+ bucket.

Sort it. Toggle the sort in the header: Total unpaid (default, largest balance first), Oldest (most 90+ dollars first), or A–Z by carrier.

What to do. Sort by Oldest, look at the Critical rows, and work the 90+ column first, that is where collection leverage is running out. A carrier whose balance is slow relative to its own average DTP is a different conversation from one that is simply on its usual timeline.

Empty state. If nothing is owed, the tool reads "No unpaid receivables on file. Either every billed job is paid in full or no jobs have been billed yet."

2. Work in progress (WIP) and lien watch

What it is. WIP is work your crew has already done that has not been billed yet. It is real, earned cash that never shows up in your receivables because no invoice exists, which makes it the fastest cash you have, since you only need to invoice it. Lien watch is the flip side: unpaid completed jobs, aged by days since the job wrapped, because lien rights lapse a set number of days after completion.

What you see. Two blocks:

• Work in progress, a headline dollar figure of unbilled completed work, and how many completed jobs it spans ("across 4 completed jobs not yet billed"), with the plain-language note that this is cash the crew already earned, sitting uninvoiced. Below it, up to five of the stalest unbilled jobs, each showing how long ago it was completed and its value.
• Lien watch, up to five of the oldest unpaid completed jobs, each showing days since completion and the outstanding amount, so the ones closest to losing lien leverage sit at the top.

What to do. Invoice the unbilled completed work first, it is the shortest path to cash. On lien watch, confirm your state's lien window (Verinode never states a per-state statute) and prioritize the oldest jobs before your filing rights lapse.

Empty state. If there is no unbilled completed work, the block reads "No completed work waiting to be billed." The lien watch block only appears when there are unpaid completed jobs.

3. Collections cadence

What it is. This looks at how following up on a billed job relates to how fast it gets paid, measured in your own book. It bands your jobs by whether a written follow-up was on record and, if so, how soon after billing.

What you see. A lead sentence summarizing the pattern, then a set of bands, "No follow-up on record," "Follow-up inside N days," "Follow-up after N+ days", each with the median days-to-pay and the sample size (n=) behind it. Beneath that, a No follow-up on record list: up to eight billed jobs still waiting with no written follow-up logged, each showing the job label, carrier, days since billing, the outstanding amount, and a flag when the receivable has aged past that carrier's usual payment window.

What to do. Work the "No follow-up on record" list, starting with jobs flagged as past the carrier's usual window. These are receivables where nobody is on record asking why.

Empty state. The whole block is omitted when there are no cadence findings and no unfollowed billed jobs.

4. Cash dip decision workspace

What it is. A "dip" is a window in the next 90 days where Verinode projects your cash going negative, cumulative outflow overtaking cumulative inflow. This workspace only appears when at least one dip is forecast. It frames the shortfall and lays out three ways to bridge it. This is the cash-flow expression of Verinode's decision workspace, see the decision workspace for how these plan-and-decide surfaces work across the platform.

What you see. A header ("One projected dip. Three plans to bridge it. Your call.", or a count when there are several), then one block per dip. Each block shows a severity label (Critical, Watching, or Heads up), the dip's title, its driver (root cause), the projected Shortfall in dollars, and how far out it is ("today," "tomorrow," or "Nd out"). Under that, three plan cards:

• Tighten receivables, the cheapest, slowest path: same-day invoicing on every closed job, lien filing on the 90+ bucket, follow-up calls on the oldest invoices. Costs only your time. Carries the cost-of-inaction (the dip if collections stay flat).
• Bridge with capital, the fastest path, costs interest: factor a receivable slice, draw on your line of credit, or sit tight. Marked Neutral, Verinode does not push you toward borrowing. The two cards below (factoring and LOC) live under this plan.
• Stretch payables, free but slow: a vendor-by-vendor ask for net-45 instead of net-30. Buys about 15 days and spends relationship capital if overused.

Each card has a Discuss with agent button that hands the dip and the chosen plan to IQ so you can talk it through in chat.

What to do. Read the shortfall and how far out it is, pick the plan that fits your week, and use Discuss with agent to work the details. Tightening receivables is usually the first move; bridging with capital is for genuine timing gaps, not a habit.

5. Factoring compare

What it is. Factoring is selling a slice of your receivables to a third party at a discount, in exchange for cash now instead of waiting for the carrier to pay. It is one of the "bridge with capital" options and appears alongside the LOC card under a projected dip. This card shows three providers side by side so you can see the math without a sales pitch.

What you see. A header noting the slice modeled, the dollar amount of AR being factored, tagged as either "TPA-tagged unpaid AR" or "Total unpaid AR", with the explicit line that Verinode does not take referral fees from any of these providers. Then three provider cards, cheapest first (the cheapest flagged), each with:

• Net cash to you, what actually lands in your account (emphasized).
• All-in cost, the total cost of the advance.
• Funded in, days to funding.
• Advance rate, the percentage of the slice advanced up front.
• Discount, the factoring discount rate.
• Provider notes where relevant.

A footer shows the rate effective date and links to the Methodology so you can see how the numbers are built.

What to do. Compare net cash and funding speed against what waiting would cost you. The cheapest option is flagged, but the right one depends on how fast you need the cash.

Empty state. When there is no unpaid AR to factor, the card reads "No unpaid AR to factor right now, collections are caught up. The compare table will populate once you have outstanding receivables."

6. Line of credit (LOC) recommendation

What it is. A line of credit is money you can draw against as needed and repay as cash comes in, the other "bridge with capital" option, sibling to the factoring card. This card sizes a suggested draw against the projected dip.

What you see. When your LOC is configured, a header with your available headroom (unused credit), then two panels:

• Recommended draw, a dollar figure sized to cover the projected shortfall plus a 30-day buffer, capped at your available headroom. If your dip is already inside your buffer, it reads "No draw needed."
• The numbers panel, APR, Expected repayment in days, Total interest cost for the draw, and Monthly service impact in dollars per month.

A footer links to the Methodology.

What to do. Weigh the total interest cost and monthly service impact against the factoring options and against simply tightening receivables. A small, short draw to cover a genuine timing gap is cheap; a standing balance is not.

7. Fixed obligations timeline

What it is. Fixed obligations are the outflows you owe regardless of how the month goes, payroll, equipment and facility leases, insurance, and debt service. This is the "money going out" side of runway, laid out over the next 90 days so you can see which weeks stack up.

What you see. A header with the total upcoming outflow, the number of upcoming lines, and an average monthly figure ("~$X/mo average"). Then a stacked bar chart, one column per week across 13 weeks, with axis marks at This week, +30d, +60d, +90d. Each column stacks its categories by color, Payroll (copper), Leases (yellow), Insurance (green), Debt service (red), so a heavy week and its cause are both visible. Hovering a week shows its date and total. Below the chart, a per-category total for the window.

What to do. Look for the weeks where the stack is tallest and line them up against the inflow projection and the runway gauge. A payroll week landing right before a slow carrier pays is exactly the kind of timing gap the dip workspace exists to bridge.

Empty state. When no obligations are captured, it reads "No payroll cadence, leases, or debt service captured yet. Tell IQ your monthly debt service, upload a P&L or loan statement, or wait for QuickBooks / Xero ingest to auto-fill the rest." If obligations exist but none have specific due dates in the window, the chart area explains that recurring cadence will populate as ingest matures.

8. Revenue waterfall and 90-day inflow

What it is. This is the always-present anchor of the Cash Flow slide, in two halves. The revenue waterfall looks backward at where revenue leaks out as a job moves from estimate to cash. The 90-day inflow looks forward at the cash you can expect to collect.

What you see, backward (waterfall). A four-stage funnel, Estimated → Approved → Billed → Collected, each stage a bar sized to its dollars, with the drop to the next stage called out beside it:

• Estimate → Approved (the approval gap)
• Approved → Billed (the billing gap)
• Billed → Collected (the collection gap)

A headline names your biggest stage drop in dollars and as a percentage of the stage above it, and a Total leakage figure sums the gaps, with a rough monthly equivalent. Drops that are trivially small are colored green (the stage held); material ones are copper. If you have not connected estimates yet, the waterfall shows partial stages and prompts you to "Add estimates to see the full waterfall."

What you see, forward (90-day inflow). A projection line of cumulative predicted inflow at 30, 60, and 90 days, built from your current AR aging and recent collection pace. Beside it two figures: Billed Unpaid (what is sitting in AR right now) and Cost of Carry (what that float costs you per year at 8% annualized, copper when it is a real number). Below, an AR aging strip repeats the 0–30 / 31–60 / 61–90 / 90+ buckets with dollars and job counts for quick context.

What to do. The waterfall tells you which stage is leaking, an approval gap is a scoping and supplement conversation, a billing gap is an invoicing-discipline conversation, a collection gap is a follow-up-and-lien conversation. Fix the biggest drop first. The cost-of-carry figure is the annual price of leaving cash in AR, it is the number that justifies tightening collections.

Cash Runway: the number at the top

What it is. Cash Runway is the single headline that ties every tool below it together: the number of days your current cash balance, plus projected inflow, covers your projected fixed outflow and carry cost over the next 90 days. It is Verinode walking your cash forward one day at a time and marking the first day the balance would go negative.

What you see. The gauge shows a day count and a band:

• Thriving (green), 60 or more days of runway.
• Watching (yellow), 30 to 59 days.
• Exposed (red), under 30 days.

A run that clears the full 90-day window shows "90+". Under the number, the gauge tells you whether any dips are projected ("2 projected dips in the next 90 days. Click to plan →") or that the coast is clear. Clicking the gauge opens the Cash Flow slide and the dip workspace.

Unlocking it, "Add cash balance." Runway math needs a starting cash balance. Until Verinode has a recent one, the gauge greys out, shows a dash instead of a number, and reads "Add cash balance." Three ways to provide it: tell IQ your current balance in chat, upload a bank statement or balance sheet, or let QuickBooks / Xero ingest fill it in. Verinode prefers whichever figure is most recent, a dated cash line on an ingested balance sheet overrides an older manually entered balance. A balance older than about a week is treated as stale, and the gauge greys out again until you refresh it, because a runway built on a month-old balance would mislead.

Best-practice example

Say your runway reads Watching, 41 days, with one projected dip 26 days out driven by "Payroll cycle hits." Open the Cash Flow slide. The fixed-obligations timeline confirms a heavy payroll week landing right when a slow carrier's balance is still in the 61–90 bucket. Before reaching for a factoring advance, the AR aging matrix shows that carrier is Critical with $38k in 90+, and WIP shows $22k of completed work never invoiced. Invoice the WIP, file liens and chase the 90+ balance, and the dip may close on its own, the cheapest bridge is the cash you already earned. The capital options are there if a real gap remains, presented as neutral math, never as Verinode's call.

Data sources