Not every rand sitting in a bank account is money the business can spend. If some of your cash is set aside for a specific purpose — a deposit held for an acquisition, a fund a lender requires you to hold — counting it in the headline makes the business look far more liquid than it is.
The Cash tile separates the two.
What the headline says
Cash on hand is your bank total less anything you have confirmed is set aside. It is money in accounts you can use, before your overdraft is taken into account.
Directly beneath it sits the same figure net of overdraft — what you could actually draw on today. The two are shown together on purpose: the first is what you hold, the second is what you can spend, and a business can have a healthy-looking first and a thin second.
The Cash position panel
Further down the same page, Cash position shows the whole picture as a short column you can read straight down:
Cash in bank is the plain total of every account in credit. Nothing is removed. It is there so the figure on the dashboard can always be traced back to the bank.
Less: ring-fenced shows money you have confirmed is set aside, and how many accounts it sits in. This line appears only if there is something set aside — most businesses will never see it.
Less: accounts in overdraft is every account sitting negative, added up. It is deliberately not called overdraft drawn: some accounts run negative on timing rather than because the business has borrowed. Naming which accounts actually draw on your facility — see below — is what separates the two.
Available to trade is what remains once both are taken off — the same figure shown beneath the headline.
Bank total, less what's set aside, less what's overdrawn, equals available to trade. If you can't make the column add up, something is wrong — tell your administrator rather than working around it.
The overdraft facility
If you have told us your overdraft limit, two more lines follow the total:
Plus: undrawn overdraft is the part of the facility your bank has committed but you have not used — borrowing power you still hold. Beneath the label it says who the facility is with, the limit, and how much of it is drawn, so the line can be checked against your bank at a glance.
Cash including facility is available-to-trade plus that undrawn amount: everything you could put your hands on this period if you drew the facility in full. It is shown last and never as the headline, because a facility is borrowing, not cash you own.
Both lines appear only once someone has confirmed the limit. If nobody has been asked, no line is shown at all — we would rather show nothing than a zero, which would read as your bank has committed nothing to you.
If the overdraft is fully drawn
The undrawn line never goes below zero, so a facility drawn beyond its limit would look identical to one drawn exactly to it. When that happens the panel says so in words underneath the table. Treat it as something to raise with your bank — it is not headroom, and it will not appear anywhere else on the dashboard.
Whether we can tell you how much you are over by depends on two things: whether the month has closed (see Reading a month that isn't finished below) and whether the accounts that draw on the facility have been confirmed. Once the month is closed and the accounts that draw on the facility are confirmed, the message carries the amount. Until then it says only that you may be over — because the figure it would otherwise quote counts unrelated accounts too, and would be larger than the truth. We would rather tell you to check with your bank than hand you a number we can't stand behind.
Which accounts count as drawn
Ideally you tell us which bank accounts actually draw on the facility, and we measure drawn against those alone.
Until that is confirmed we fall back on counting every account in overdraft as drawn. That deliberately errs on the cautious side: it makes drawn look larger and the amount available look smaller than it really is. The panel says so plainly whenever it is working that way. Confirming the accounts with your administrator removes the caveat and sharpens the figure — often materially, because accounts that dip negative on timing are then no longer counted as borrowing.
The one thing we will not do on this basis is quote a breach amount. Being cautious about headroom is sound; being "cautious" about how far over your limit you are just means telling you something worse than the truth, which is no safer for being pessimistic.
Like ring-fencing, this is a confirmation someone at your business makes with a reason and a date attached; nothing is guessed from account names.
Reading a month that isn't finished
The dashboard always shows the most recent period in your ledger. Most of the time that month has closed. Part-way through a month it has not — and the panel says so: the Cash position header reads month to date, the Period block underneath says still open, and the page heading carries the same words.
This matters most for the overdraft. Cash follows a rhythm inside every month. Rent, payroll and the supplier run go out early; the money that pays for them comes in over the weeks that follow. An overdraft read on the 18th is read at the bottom of that curve. The same facility read after the month closes can be comfortably inside its limit.
So while a month is still open we show you everything — the limit, how much is drawn, what is left — but we will not tell you that you are over your limit. That is a statement about a month, and the month hasn't happened yet. When it closes, we say either way: if it closes still over the limit, the panel says so with the amount.
If you have not confirmed your financial year-end with us, we can't work out whether the newest month has finished, so we treat it the same way — everything shown, no breach claimed. Confirming your year-end with your administrator settles it.
How an account becomes ring-fenced
Nothing is classified automatically. An account is treated as set aside only after someone at your business confirms it, in writing, with a reason — during setup, or later when circumstances change. Until that happens every account counts as ordinary operating cash, which is why an untouched dashboard looks exactly as it always did.
The reason is kept with the confirmation, so anyone reading the number months later can see why that account was excluded and who said so.
If a ring-fence is released — the acquisition completes, the lender's condition falls away — ask your administrator to revoke the classification. The money returns to Available to trade from that point on, and the earlier position stays on record as it was reported at the time.
Why the headline is not the bank total
It is tempting to lead with the larger number. But money committed elsewhere is not cash the business has, and a headline that includes it will read as strength on a day when there is none. The bank total is never hidden — it is the first line of the table, and the tile says underneath the headline how much was set aside to get there.