Dear community, as we are heavily strategizing and preparing everything for our participation in Intuit’s QuickBooks Connect Conference as exhibitors and App Showdown Finalists, the focus of today's email is to update you on our current central points as we bring PayPie from concept to fruition, as well as how the Single Ledger fits into the big picture. With PayPie, we are emphasizing the risk score and cash flow forecasting featured in the analytics dashboard. The best way to think of this is to consider the risk score the genus and the cash flow forecasting the species. Both are ways to get businesses, accountants and bookkeepers signed up and using PayPie. The risk score is the tool that businesses will use as a digital fingerprint to explore opportunities to improve cash flow. In turn, the score is what potential lenders or investors will use to assess the businesses. The more we refine the accuracy of the risk score, the more SMEs and investors or lenders, we will attract to the platform. This is the win-win component. Blockchain will be the glue that holds everything together. The risk score, which indicates how well a business is managing its operations and debt, will be hashed to the blockchain where permissioned lenders can access it as a way to evaluate the business before establishing terms. The greater accuracy of the PayPie risk score brought about by the Single Ledger initiative will help PayPie, its users and its invoice buyers overcome one of the main hurdles affecting supply chain financing — the risk of fraud — especially, selling an invoice more than once. The awareness and exposure potentials that the Single Ledger can bring to PayPie is limitless. It has the potential to create a global ecosystem for the sharing of information between previously disparate accounting systems. It has powerful implications for lending and audit that will directly attract countless eyeballs to the PayPie platform. (See the proof of concept video.) This is the top-level view. But, I know there are still a lot of questions. Here are the answers to the two ones you’ve asked the most: Q: I understand how the risk score fits into everything, but what about the cash flow forecasting? A: The cash flow forecasting is a value-added component. By seeing how money moves in and out of the business, a business is better able to anticipate when and if they’ll need funds. That’s when PayPie will best serve them with new opportunities. It helps them build better businesses by analyzing factors like the timing of when they’re getting paid by their customers as compared to when they have to pay their creditors. (The mistiming of which can cause a cash flow crisis.) Cash flow forecasting can also be used as a tool for long-term planning. For example, if a business can project that it’ll be generating enough income, it can then determine if it’s able to hire additional staff, develop a new product and/or explore other growth opportunities. Q: So, the business analytics dashboard is a value-added component? A: Yes, it’s a tool to help businesses understand the factors affecting cash flow and their overall ability to access funding. Accounting software, like QuickBooks Online, simply houses a business’ financial data — it doesn’t help a business interpret or understand it from an investor or lender’s point of view. PayPie’s analytics dashboard does both. Once a business connects its accounting software to PayPie, all they have to do is log in to see their latest cash flow forecast and risk assessment. In doing so the dashboard gives businesses a reason to stay engaged with PayPie, even when they may not have an immediate need for financing. It’s also a way to attract a larger audience overall. (See our blog post — 5 Reason to Use PayPie for Cash Flow Forecasting.)