This simple process keeps the company on top of its cash, can guide weekly expectations for incoming (Accounts Receivable) and outgoing (Accounts Payable) and can support strategy around needed cash including bank and investor requirements. These questions are centered on good behaviors in tracking the cash flow of a CPG business. While cash flow is important in any industry, it is particularly important in CPG because these companies sell to large powerful companies like Walmart and Costco, who will be aggressive in setting the terms for their contracts. Commerce in the DTC space can range from subscription services and next-generation vending to own-brand stores, pop-up stores and social commerce.

• Many of these players made major SG&A reductions emerging from the GFC and have sustained them since then—by 3.3 percentage points of sales since 2010.
• To deliver a connected customer experience, supply chains must be tailored and responsive.
• Without a strong knowledge of the balance sheet and well-documented accounts, a company can’t be sure that its income statement is accurate.
• A cash receipts and disbursements forecast is a simple way to review what is coming in and going out of the bank, as well as preparing a short-term forecast of the expected activity.
• More holistically, cloud technology—within a robust technology ecosystem that encompasses data analytics—can transform operational and business initiatives to drive consistent innovation and bottom-line growth.
• Closely tracking trade will also enable you to understand how much money you have left to put toward programs that could help you achieve your revenue target for the year.

CPG accounting is the practice of financial management and reporting for a company involved in consumer packaged goods (CPG) production. It includes the accurate tracking and analysis of inventory, sales and cost of goods sold, forecasting and budgeting, cash flow management, pricing strategy, and other components necessary to maximize profitability. However, it’s more than just crunching numbers – it also requires an eye toward understanding consumer behavior and market trends so that companies can make informed decisions when it comes to their product lines.

Omnichannel supply chain

A good outsourced bookkeeping and accounting firm customizes its engagements to support the varied needs of its clients. Whether a client’s business is in their kitchen or they have multiple co-packers, engagements can be as simple or complex as needed. Our research shows that top performers reallocate 2–3 percent of resources per year, removing unproductive costs and channelling funds to priority initiatives.

Accrual accounting makes it easier to analyze your finances period to period and understand your cost of goods sold. This information takes time to set up, but once you do, it pays dividends in the long run. It will help you keep your business ledger organized and reduce the work necessary to make sense of your finances. PwC analysis found that Starbucks was ahead of its peers in understanding how consumers interact with its products across their lifetimes. Starbucks leaders understood the value of retaining customers across every stage of life. Overall, these four activity ratios can be very important for consumer packaged goods companies.

Data is everything—if it’s consistent

They also tend to focus on a key channel to deliver and delight the core audience before expanding distribution points to increase purchase frequency. An acquirer can open the door to a few thoughtful channel expansions, as well as guide the small brand in pulling commercial levers (ie, pricing and promotional optimization) before scale takes hold, keeping the brand efficient. Of course, superior functional performance is also essential for evergreen brands, and the bar keeps rising as private-label contract manufacturers mature. Evergreen brands must obsess over their functional performance across all consumer occasions, using innovation as needed to retain leadership. US millennials are almost four times more likely than baby boomers to avoid buying products from “the big food companies” and almost six times more likely to find newer brands “better or more innovative.1McKinsey, “Millennial Survey,” 2019. The global CPG industry performed very well for a very long time, building many of the world’s top brands.

And, of course, cross-functional coordination is critical; lack of such coordination will produce inefficiencies. For instance, launching exclusive SKUs without first aligning with the supply-chain function could increase logistics costs in the channel, or even across channels. CPG companies have been using M&A&D extensively to pivot their portfolios toward growth and add capabilities rapidly. In the last decade, leading CPGs players turned over their portfolios at more than twice the rate of other large listed firms.4McKinsey analysis.

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

The supply chain assets need to be leveraged at scale across these segments, where possible, to manage the cost base and adjust dynamically to enable responsiveness and resilience. Some companies are adopting more asset-light structures in which they outsource a significant portion of assets cpg accounting and use an ecosystem to be more flexible. These capabilities help the company plan and re-plan the total supply chain based on real-time data-led insights, for responsiveness and resilience. To deliver a connected customer experience, supply chains must be tailored and responsive.

• Executives in our survey think keeping up with the changing consumer will be one of their greatest challenges.
• Using a data-driven approach — supported by technology — they can harness the insights necessary to make sound decisions, despite uncertainty and complexity.
• CPG sales can lead to merchandise returns, customer credits for various reasons, have right-of-return stipulations, and even offer warranty terms to its customers.
• Most food entrepreneurs and CPG business owners have never been in CEO positions or have prior experience operating a business, which is why Accountfully spends time educating the client.
• In this environment, the best signal of success comes from those consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies that solve an increasingly complex equation to achieve profitable growth.
• While some of the activities expressed in the questions below seem readily apparent, they are not always activities that are prioritized and completed.

To strengthen consumer relationships, CPG leaders can turn to exclusive events, either virtual or real; games and contests; loyalty programs and rewards; community building; and entertainment. Below are profit margins for the eight largest CPGs in the S&P 100 as of March 2020. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities.