Cash-Flow Forecasting & Anomaly Detection

At Evellere Solutions, we equip accounting firms with forward-looking insights and automated alerts so you can advise clients proactively—long before a cash crunch or unexpected expense derails their plans. Below is our end-to-end approach, combining rigorous data practices with advanced AI models, all wrapped in enterprise-grade security.

1. Overview & Objectives

• Why It Matters: Traditional cash-flow models require manual data gathering and spreadsheet gymnastics—often too slow for today’s fast-moving businesses. Our AI-driven forecasts deliver rolling projections and anomaly alerts in minutes, not days.

• Our Goal:

  1. Ingest clean historical cash-flow data.

  2. Generate accurate 8- to 13-week forecasts.

  3. Automatically flag irregular transactions or sudden spikes.

  4. Present results in clear dashboards and concise reports.

2. Data Integration & Preparation

• Secure Data Extraction:
  • We pull weekly or daily net-cash figures from your connected QuickBooks/Xero ledger via OAuth-authenticated API calls—no CSV exports.

• Data Cleaning & Normalization:
  • Our pipelines standardize dates, remove duplicates, and fill minor gaps using interpolation. Any missing data points are highlighted for optional manual review.

• Immutable Audit Trail:
  • Every dataset snapshot is digitally signed and stored (AES-256 encrypted), ensuring you can trace exactly which data fed each forecast.

3. AI-Powered Forecasting Process

• Model Selection & Training:
  • We leverage AWS Forecast (or a proprietary time-series model) tuned for small-business seasonality. Hyperparameters are automatically optimized based on your firm’s historical cash-flow patterns.

• Automated Job Orchestration:
  • A scheduled serverless function (AWS Lambda) uploads prepared data to S3, triggers the Forecast job, and polls for completion—no manual intervention required.

• Result Ingestion & Storage:
  • Completed forecasts (point estimates and confidence intervals) are retrieved and stored in a dedicated ForecastResults database table, ready for reporting.

4. Anomaly Detection & Alerts

• Real-Time Monitoring:
  • We feed transaction-level data into AWS Lookout for Metrics (or an LLM-based outlier detector) that flags any entries falling outside statistical thresholds (e.g., 1.5× the IQR) or exhibiting unusual vendor patterns.

• Alert Delivery:
  • Detected anomalies trigger instant notifications—via email or in-app—detailing the transaction date, amount, and reason for flagging.

• False-Positive Minimization:
  • A human-in-the-loop review option lets you confirm or dismiss anomalies, training the model over time to better align with your firm’s definition of “irregular.”

5. Technical Safeguards & Compliance

• Encryption & Network Security:
  • All data at rest (S3, DynamoDB) uses AES-256; in transit, we enforce TLS 1.2+. Forecast and anomaly jobs run in isolated VPC subnets, preventing unauthorized access.

• Role-Based Access Controls:
  • Only users with the “Analyst” or “Admin” role can view or approve anomaly alerts. Forecast jobs are triggered by an isolated service account with narrow IAM permissions.

• Immutable Logging:
  • Every forecast run and anomaly detection event is logged to CloudWatch Logs and a write-once audit store, providing full traceability for compliance audits.

• Periodic Model Retraining & Review:
  • We retrain our forecasting model quarterly with the latest data, and conduct code-level security reviews on all processing scripts.

6. Benefits & Outcomes

• Proactive Advisory:
  • Anticipate cash shortfalls up to 13 weeks ahead—empowering your firm to recommend payment-term adjustments, line-of-credit strategies, or expense realignments before the pressure mounts.

• Time Savings:
  • Automate manual forecast updates and anomaly checks—freeing your team from spreadsheet maintenance and ad-hoc data pulls.

• Improved Accuracy:
  • Advanced machine-learning models reduce human bias and deliver statistically robust projections, with confidence ranges to guide risk assessment.

• Enhanced Client Trust:
  • Immediate, data-driven insights and automated alerts position your firm as a forward-thinking partner, strengthening long-term relationships.

7. Getting Started

1. Initial Discovery Call:
   • We’ll discuss your current forecasting challenges and define your preferred cadence (daily, weekly, or monthly).

2. Grant Read-Only API Access:
   • Create a temporary user in QuickBooks/Xero with the minimal “read transactions” scope—our scripts will only ingest data, not modify it.

3. Review Sample Forecast:
   • We’ll run a one-time demo using your last quarter’s data and share an interactive dashboard plus PDF report for your review.

4. Full Deployment & Training:
   • Once you approve, we schedule recurring jobs, set up your alert preferences, and walk your team through interpreting and acting on the insights.