What is Cash Radar and how does it work?

What Is Cash Radar?

Cash Radar is the feature; Pulse by ExpenseBot is the personalized weekly email it delivers. Cash Radar turns the financial activity ExpenseBot already captures into a simple weekly answer to the question every freelancer and small-business owner has: "How is my business doing right now, and what should I pay attention to next?"

Instead of making you interpret spreadsheets, receipts, bills, income entries, and client invoices yourself, Pulse brings the most important signals together in one calm, plain-English business update — what came in, what went out, what is due next, where cash may get tight, and the one action that deserves your attention. Cash Radar is currently marked Beta, and the email improves every week.

It looks at the receipts, supplier invoices, and income notifications ExpenseBot already captures from your Gmail, then sends Pulse when there is enough useful signal to report:

• Bills due soon — unpaid supplier invoices with vendor name, due date, and amount
• Client invoices expected (receivables) — open invoices you've issued through Bill Client, shown as money expected. These are treated as receivables, never counted as income until the payment actually arrives.
• Expected or recent income — income and payment notifications, plus recurring income patterns when the signal is strong
• Known cash need — confirmed bills due minus strong expected income signals (not a bank-balance forecast)
• Needs review — items with a missing due date, unclear invoice direction, possible duplicate, or uncertain amount

Cash Radar shows both sides of near-term cash flow: what you owe vendors (supplier bills due) and what clients owe you (open invoices you've issued).

What Pulse Covers

A typical Pulse email can include, when the underlying data supports it:

• Weekly money in, money out, and net movement, with current-year profit/loss direction and comparison context (monthly and year-over-year where enough history exists)
• Known bills due in the next 30 days, and open or overdue client invoices
• A clear distinction between confirmed income, evidence-backed recurring income, and unknown future income — the three are never blended
• An eight-week Low-Water outlook when enough dated information exists
• Warnings when bills arrive before expected client payments
• Client-income concentration alerts when too much income depends on one source
• Recurring-income cadence checks: income that usually arrives but has not appeared
• Spending-change detection for categories that moved enough to matter
• Subscription increases and recurring-cost creep (from the Subscription Tracker) and bank-fee/interest context (from the fee audit)
• Tax set-aside guidance only where ExpenseBot has enough jurisdiction and income evidence, plus mileage-rate and deduction reminders where applicable
• Grouped data-quality alerts (such as missing due dates) instead of repetitive cleanup noise
• One prioritized, practical next step — not a wall of charts
• Automatic conversion to your home currency, with correct local formatting

The Honesty Rules Pulse Follows

Pulse does not manufacture certainty:

• A usefulness gate withholds weak, malformed, stale, or filler reports — if there is not enough reliable information, Pulse stays quiet that week.
• Numeric claims are rejected unless they exist in the validated financial facts — the AI cannot invent numbers.
• Pulse separates confirmed facts from likely patterns, and can candidly say: "There is not enough information to conclude X, but Y is worth checking."
• If ExpenseBot lacks a current cash balance, Pulse will not pretend to know things that depend on one — like hiring affordability or how much you can safely pay yourself.
• You stay in control: Cash Radar can be managed or turned off at any time.

Where the Information Comes From

Cash Radar uses documents ExpenseBot already captures:

• Supplier invoice PDFs from Gmail
• Paid receipts and subscription renewals
• Income notifications from Stripe, Square, PayPal, Interac, and similar platforms
• Payment confirmations
• Items already flagged for review in your ExpenseBot spreadsheet

No separate spreadsheet forecast or manual reminder list is required.

How It Differs From Your P/L Report

P/L reports help you understand profit. Cash Radar helps you notice upcoming cash activity before month-end.

Put simply: a P&L explains what happened; Pulse connects what happened with what is coming next. A spreadsheet stores the numbers; Pulse tells you which number matters. Your books record the business — Pulse tells you what the business is saying.

How Cash Radar Becomes Useful

Cash Radar is an email layer on top of documents ExpenseBot already finds. It is not a button users need to click for an immediate dashboard.

ExpenseBot may automatically enable Cash Radar for mature accounts with healthy Gmail/sheet access and enough receipt history. That only makes the account eligible. The sender still reads the spreadsheet each week and skips the email if there is not enough useful signal.

The report becomes useful when ExpenseBot has enough signal, such as:

• supplier invoices with due dates
• expected or recent income signals
• recurring bills or recurring income patterns
• review items that may affect cash flow
• open client invoices you've issued (receivables / expected cash-in)

If there is not enough useful signal, ExpenseBot skips the email rather than send filler. Turning Cash Radar off, when enabled for an account, does not stop receipt scanning, income detection, or P/L reports. It only stops the Cash Radar email, and ExpenseBot respects that opt-out.

Does Cash Radar Track What Clients Owe Me?

Yes — as a lightweight receivables view. When you create a client invoice from an expense report using Bill Client, ExpenseBot records it as an open receivable: money you're expecting, kept separate from income you've actually received. The invoice stays linked to its report and carries a status of Open, Paid, Overdue, or Review.

Cash Radar folds those open client invoices into your expected cash-in alongside supplier bills due and normal income signals — so you see both what you owe and what you're owed. It never counts an open invoice as income already received; your income tracking and reconciliation remain the source of truth for money that has actually arrived.

This is a lightweight receivables view built from invoices you already create inside ExpenseBot — not full accounts-receivable accounting. QuickBooks AR export is a later integration step and is not part of this yet.

Why Some Items Say "Needs Review"

Review items are intentionally separated so Cash Radar does not count uncertain documents as confirmed cash activity. Common reasons an item appears in review:

• Missing due date on a supplier invoice
• Unclear whether the document is a bill to pay or a customer invoice
• Possible duplicate paid/unpaid document pair
• Missing or uncertain amount

Clearing review items in your ExpenseBot spreadsheet improves future Cash Radar accuracy.

Why Didn't I Receive a Pulse Email?

ExpenseBot may skip a week when there is nothing useful to report — no upcoming supplier bills, no income signals, no useful normal-spend baseline, and no review items. This is intentional: you only receive Cash Radar when it has meaningful information.

Other reasons you might not receive it:

• Cash Radar is turned off for your account
• Gmail automation is disconnected or needs reauthorization
• ExpenseBot has not captured enough recent receipt or invoice activity

What "Known Cash Need" Means

Known cash need is the value of supplier bills and invoices ExpenseBot found that appear due soon, adjusted by strong expected income signals where available. It is not a projected bank balance. It does not include every possible future payment — only bills ExpenseBot has seen in a source document or strong recurring pattern.

Can My Accountant Use Cash Radar?

If your accountant has access to your ExpenseBot reports, Cash Radar can help them spot upcoming supplier bills, missing income signals, and review-heavy documents earlier in the month — before month-end cleanup.