Nearmap sells subscriptions on either 1 or 3 year...

Nearmap sells subscriptions on either 1 or 3 year plans.

Customers pay for 12 months in advance.

The cashflow shows receipts from a particular quarter but the customer has paid for 12 months in advance so we won't see cash from that customer again for 3 more quarters.

This is different to revenue where revenue is recognised quarter by quarter.

Might be clearer with an example. Say Solar King Pty Ltd buys an annual subscription for $5000/year today. They pay Nearmap $5000 a week from now.

Cashflow - 100% of that will show up in this quarter's cashflow (which will be reported January 2014).

Revenue - One quarter of that, i.e. $1,250, will be recognised as revenue in this quarter. $1,250 will be revenue for quarter ending 31 March 2014, another $1,250 at 30 June 2014 and so on.

Hence what you're seeing quarter on quarter in the cashflow statements is:
- new signups
- payments from customers* renewing from a year prior
- any one-off jobs (in the past Nearmap has done jobs for the mining sector for example)

*- as the paywall only went up in December 2012 we haven't got any of the new subs renewing yet. Any renewals would be from customers from the pre-paywall era.