Cash Flow and Getting Into Stores

The money picture beyond COGS, and what retail and distribution demand.

1. Cash flow for manufacturers: WIP and payment termsWhy a food manufacturer's cash runs on different timing than its profit — how raw materials, work in progress, supplier terms, and receivables move money, and how to build a 90-day forecast you can act on.
2. Why the model says $85K and the bank says emptyHow to find the gap between a cash forecast and your real bank balance — the cash tied up in work in progress, the scattered supplier terms, and the untracked partial payments that drain it — and line up affordable credit before a tight week forces your hand.
3. Getting into stores: what buyers and distributors ask forHow to assemble the supplier packet a retailer or distributor asks for before they stock you — a per-channel price list, insurance, food-safety status, traceability, case specs, and a real barcode — and how to find out which of those a given buyer treats as non-negotiable.
4. EDI, chargebacks, and the machinery of a big accountHow a big retailer runs its inbound supply chain — the EDI documents, the routing guide, the GS1-128 shipping label, and the chargebacks it deducts when you miss — so you can ship to spec and stop losing margin off the top of every invoice.
5. Order to cash, and a clean hand-off to accountingHow to run the whole chain from a customer's order to cash in the bank — and hand your bookkeeper summarized numbers that still trace back to the exact lots and units behind them, without keying the same order into two systems by hand.