Paying for coffee that arrives in spring
Ostra roasts for its three cafés and about forty wholesale accounts. Green coffee is contracted at harvest and paid in instalments as each container ships, sometimes four months before a bag is roasted. A single container can be $18,000 or more.
The cafés and the roastery are separate companies with separate accounts, so nobody saw the whole picture at once. To stay safe, Dev and his co-founder kept about $110,000 sitting in the roastery account at all times. It felt prudent, and it meant they put off a second wholesale delivery van for two years.
Every container on the calendar
On the Group plan, both companies sit in one consolidated forecast. Dev added each green coffee contract as a scheduled payment with its shipping dates, and the café takings come in daily from Tallyhub.
Now the forecast shows each container landing as a step down, months ahead, against the steady climb of café sales. The buffer is set to what the next three containers actually need, not a round number that felt safe.
- Oct 14Café takings, 3 cafésWeekly · TallyhubWeekly+21,600
- Oct 20Container 14 · Huila, Colombia320 bags · second instalmentShipped−18,400
- Oct 31Payroll, 31 peopleNorthwind PayrollScheduled−52,300
- Nov 18Container 15 · Sidama, Ethiopia275 bags · on the waterBooked−21,750
- Dec 9Container 16 · Cerrado, Brazil300 bags · contractedBooked−16,900
- Dec 12Wholesale invoices, 40 accountsLedgerly · net 30Expected+34,800
Next three containers: $57,050. Cash stays above the $48k buffer every week.
“We had been holding a second van’s worth of cash in an account for two years, just in case. The forecast showed us the case never came.”
Dev RamanCo-founder, Ostra Coffee RoastersCash that works for the business
Within three months Ostra lowered its standing buffer from $110,000 to $48,000 and used part of the difference to buy the second van outright. Wholesale deliveries went from three days a week to five.
The monthly review between the two founders now takes half an hour, because they start from one consolidated number instead of reconciling two spreadsheets.
