# What is a cash sweep?

URL: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/cash-sweep
Markdown twin of that page. Append `.md` to any Orla page URL to get one.

A cash sweep is an automatic transfer between a company's own accounts, made on a rule, to keep one account topped up or to move idle cash where it earns more.

Banks have offered sweeps for decades: at the end of each day the balance above a target leaves the checking account for a money market fund, and comes back when the checking account dips. The rule is two numbers, a floor and a ceiling, and the money never leaves the company.

For a small company the useful sweep is usually the other way round: keeping the payroll or the payout account funded before payday, so a run of payments does not bounce because the money sat one account over. The payroll account needs $24,000 on the 28th; on the 25th the sweep moves what is missing from operating.

A sweep is a transfer, not spending and not income. In the books it is one row that moves money between two of your own accounts, and counting it twice is how a month gets overstated.

#### How this shows up in Orla

In Orla every payment runs against the days ahead, and when a day would run short, money moves between your own accounts first: a small sweep goes by itself inside the [payment mandate](https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/payment-mandate), a larger one waits for your press. Nothing leaves the company to do it.

#### Related terms

- Payment mandate: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/payment-mandate
- Month-end close: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/month-end-close
- Stablecoin: https://www.orla.finance/en/glossary/stablecoin

#### Read next

- Cash flow and sweeps: https://www.orla.finance/en/use-cases/cash-flow
- Payroll cash: https://www.orla.finance/en/use-cases/payroll-cash