Customizing Your Cash Flows in Bukers BTA
One of the key features of Bukers BTA is the ability to customize your cash flows. In BTA, we provide you with 6 cash flow statements. These are:
- UCA Cash Flow
- Indirect Cash Flow
- Traditional Cash Flow
- Modified Traditional Cash Flow
- Modified UCA Cash Flow
- Modified Indirect Cash Flow
The last four cash flow statements in this list are customizable. Here’s what you can do with them:
Where to find the custom cash flows
To get to the custom cash flows, look at the top of your screen while you are on either the Balance Sheet or Income Statement screen. There you will see a button that says Custom Cash Flows. Clicking on this button will take you to a screen with the four custom cash flows listed on the left side of the screen. By default, the Traditional Cash Flow model appears on the right. To view a different cash flow, just click on that cash flow link on the left and it will appear on the right side of the screen.
If the Custom Cash Flows button is grayed out, this means one of two things.
- You only have one column of financial data on the balance sheet and income statement. You need two to activate the custom cash flows.
- Your financial statements or tax returns are not linked. To link your financial statements, you will need to close your file then reopen it. Go to the second setup screen “Tax Return/Financial Statement Management.” Above the ‘Date’ column, you will see a chain link button. Click on this button to link your statements together. Be sure to create a link from each statement to its previous statement (i.e. link 2023 to 2022, 2022 to 2021, etc.). The oldest statement will be left “Not Linked.”
How do you customize your cash flows?
All four custom cash flows allow you to add:
- Retained Earnings Adjustments
- Other Cash Flow Adjustments
- Existing Debt service
- Projected Debt Service
You can go even further and itemize these adjustments (see Setting Up Sub-Accounts in Bukers BTA).
To do this:
- Right click on the adjustment you would like to itemize and click Create a New Sub-Account.
- You will be prompted to name the adjustment. Once named, click Ok.
Your new adjustment will appear indented under the adjustment you selected along with space to enter the adjustment amount.
In addition to the above, the Modified Traditional Cash Flow pulls in Capital Expenditures and allows you to add CAPEX adjustments. The Modified UCA and Modified Indirect Cash Flows allow you to add CAPEX Not Financed as well as CAPEX adjustments. These adjustments can also be itemized as described above.
Once the debt is entered and all adjustments are made, all four custom cash flows give you the Surplus (Shortage) and the Debt Service Coverage Ratio.
While most financial institutions use either the Traditional or UCA Cash Flow Model, these customizable cash flows give you the added flexibility to see how future debt can affect your lending decisions. And best of all, you can pull the data contained on these cash flows into your global cash flow analysis!
When working through a spread, if you run into any questions, please give our hotline a call at (503) 520-1303.