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KaarobarFeaturesCash flow
Feature · Money

COD cash flow, honest about what it cannot see

Every cash-flow tool wants to show you a balance. This one refuses to, and that refusal is the feature — a stated balance that quietly omits your cash spending is wrong and gets trusted anyway.

Why COD cash is hard to read

  • Sales are not cash. A COD order becomes money only after it delivers and the courier pays. Until then it is freight you've spent on a sale that may still come back.
  • Couriers hold your money. Most parcels settle within days, but we measured a 90th percentile of 8 days from delivery to settlement (our benchmark). At any moment part of your working capital sits with the courier.
  • Returns eat the pipeline. About 27.5% of COD parcels come back, so the parcels in transit today are not all future income.
  • A lot of spending never touches your systems. Market purchases in cash, owner drawings and prepaid orders don't pass through Shopify or the courier.

Why it reconciles instead of asserting

A bar showing what the app expects the bank balance to be, next to a shorter bar showing what the bank actually says, with the difference labelled as money that moved unrecorded AT THE NEXT RECONCILIATION What it should be last balance + COD in − costs seen What the bank says the gap Money that moved without being recorded. Almost always cash spending nobody wrote down — which is the point of measuring it.
The app never states the left-hand bar as fact. You supply the right-hand one, and the difference is the finding.

No software reading Shopify and courier data can know your bank balance. It can only know a part of it, and a partial figure presented as a total is the most dangerous number a dashboard can show, because nobody treats it as partial.

So the flow is inverted. You record what the bank actually said on a date. The app adds what couriers have really transferred since, and subtracts the costs it can see. It then shows what the balance should be.

The gap at the next reconciliation is the most valuable number on the page. It is money that moved without being recorded — and in a COD business it is almost always untracked cash spending. A tool that asserted a balance would have hidden exactly that.

How it works

  1. Enter your bank balance and the date it was true. Once is enough to start.
  2. Kaarobar adds the COD that actually arrived, from matched courier remittances (see COD reconciliation), not from delivered orders it hopes will pay.
  3. It subtracts the costs it can see: the expenses and ad spend you've recorded, prorated across the days in the period.
  4. It shows what should be in the bank now. Next time you enter a real balance, the difference is shown as money that left, or arrived, unexplained.

What it can see, and does

COD actually transferredMatched remittances, not delivered-and-hoping+
Recorded expenses and ad spendProrated across the days that overlap the period−
Vendor payables outstandingCommitted, not yet paid−
Cash trapped in stockInventory at cost — money already spent, not yet earned◑
What the balance should be= expected

What is coming in the next 30 days

Below the reconciliation, the page shows the money already on its way and the money already committed:

  • Couriers owe you: COD delivered and not yet paid.
  • Riding on parcels in transit: COD still moving, discounted twice: once for the share that historically comes back as RTO, once for the courier's cut.
  • Overdue COD: delivered more than 30 days ago and still unsettled.
  • Bills due in 30 days: supplier payables, with anything already overdue called out.

An early version counted only delivered-but-unsettled COD, and both test stores read negative, which would have opened with a false liquidity alarm on a healthy business. Counting in-transit COD at its discounted value fixed that. It is a projection with its assumptions on the surface, not a promise.

What to do about it

The page ends with the cash decisions the numbers point to, and says so when there are none. It flags an unexplained gap since the last reconciliation, a 30-day projection that comes up short, COD more than 30 days old, stock value rising while sales fall, one courier delivering well below another, and ad spend taking a large share of contribution profit.

What you get

  • A balance you can check, instead of one you have to take on trust.
  • Unrecorded spending, priced at every reconciliation.
  • The cash that is owed to you, split into what's delivered, what's in transit and what's overdue.
  • Upcoming bills next to incoming COD, so a short month is visible before it arrives.

For the background, read how cash on delivery works in Pakistan and why your Shopify dashboard and your bank disagree. To see how much of a month's sales reaches your account, try the COD profit calculator.

See it on your own orders — install free

Questions merchants actually ask

Can it connect to my bank account?
No, deliberately. A bank feed would still miss cash purchases and owner drawings, and it would make the resulting figure look complete when it is not. Recording the balance yourself keeps the incompleteness visible, which is what makes the gap meaningful.
How often should I reconcile?
Monthly is enough for most stores. The value comes from the sequence — each reconciliation prices the untracked spending since the last one.
Does it count orders that haven't been delivered yet?
Not as cash. Delivered-but-unpaid COD shows as owed to you, and in-transit COD shows as a discounted projection. Only matched courier transfers count as money that arrived.
Where do expenses and ad spend come from?
You record them in Kaarobar, including recurring monthly costs like rent and salaries. Anything recorded is subtracted; anything not recorded shows up as the gap at your next reconciliation.
Why does it show stock value?
Stock is cash you've already spent and not yet earned back. Stock value rising while sales fall is flagged, because it is money leaving the bank without showing up anywhere else.
Bank mein kitne paise hone chahiye, ye kaise pata chalega?
Aap ek dafa apna asal bank balance aur tareekh daal dein. Kaarobar us ke baad courier se aayi COD jama karta hai aur record kiye gaye kharche ghata deta hai, phir batata hai ke bank mein kitna hona chahiye. Agli dafa jo farq aaye, woh aam tor par cash kharcha hota hai jo record nahi hua.

Keep reading

COD in Pakistan

The complete guide to how COD money actually moves, and who holds it.

Dashboard vs. bank

Four specific reasons the screen and the account disagree.

COD profit calculator

Five sliders, no signup. Watch gross sales fall to what actually reaches your account.

Expenses & payables

Overheads, ad spend and what you owe suppliers.

COD reconciliation

Match courier remittances to the parcels that produced them.