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Cash on the balance sheet that is not available for general operating use because it is contractually pledged or held for a specific purpose — typical examples include landlord lease-deposit escrows, customer-funds collateral, security deposits backing letters of credit, payment-processor reserves, and debt-covenant minimum-balance requirements. Per IFRS and US GAAP balance-sheet presentation, restricted cash must be disclosed separately from unrestricted cash; the board should treat this number as removed from runway. Common pitfall: payment-processor "reserve" balances and large customer-deposit floats are often missed when reporting unrestricted cash, inflating apparent runway. — Finance KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).

I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier)

No public third-party standard anchors this KPI yet, so I'mBoard authors and maintains the definition — transparently labeled as editorial tier. See the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system and the back-attribution workstream.

Rogue ID: finance.total_restricted_cash Type: Currency Domain: Finance

Definition

Formula

Sum of bank-account balances flagged `restricted: true` in `finance.bank_accounts_list`, plus any restricted balances held in non-bank vehicles (escrow agents, payment-processor reserve accounts).

Why it matters

Excluded from operationally available cash and from the runway calculation — reporting it inside total cash without flagging the restriction overstates runway and can mask a covenant or liquidity issue.

How to interpret

A non-trivial restricted balance (say, >5% of total cash — industry folk-wisdom, not citation-grade) usually warrants a footnote on the source of the restriction and any release schedule. Watch for restricted cash that grows faster than the corresponding operating activity (e.g. payment-processor reserves growing faster than GMV) — that often signals a tightening processor relationship.

Calculation policy

How an AI agent should compute this KPI from messy company data. Free-text rules consumed at reasoning time — not a deterministic DSL. The most common ways to get this wrong are listed under Common miscomputations.

Inclusion rules

Bank-account balances flagged restricted in finance.bank_accounts_list.
Contractually pledged or purpose-held cash: landlord lease-deposit escrows, letter-of-credit collateral, security deposits, payment-processor reserves, customer-funds collateral, and debt-covenant minimum-balance requirements.
Restricted balances held outside bank accounts (escrow agents, processor reserve accounts).

Exclusion rules

Unrestricted operating cash that is freely deployable for payroll or vendors.
Soft internal earmarks ("set aside for the raise") that are not contractually restricted — those are still unrestricted and deployable.
Undrawn facilities or future obligations not yet funded into a restricted account.

Required inputs

Per-account restricted flag plus the source of each restriction (lease, LC, processor, covenant).
Any scheduled release dates for the restriction.

Data-source priority

finance.bank_accounts_list restricted flags reconciled to the underlying contracts.
Legal / contract documents and processor agreements for collateral and reserve terms.

Edge cases

Payment-processor reserves that grow faster than GMV — often signal a tightening processor relationship; flag the trend.
Customer-prepaid balances held in segregated / restricted accounts are NOT deployable.
A restriction released mid-period reclassifies to unrestricted — disclose the reclassification.

Validation checks

Restricted cash must be ≤ finance.total_cash_in_bank.
finance.total_unrestricted_cash must equal total cash − restricted cash.
A restricted balance above ~5% of total cash (folk-wisdom, not citation-grade) warrants a footnote on the source and release schedule.

Common miscomputations

Missing processor reserves or large customer-deposit floats — the classic way restricted cash is understated and runway overstated.
Classifying a soft internal earmark as restricted — understates deployable cash and runway.

finance.total_cash_in_bank
finance.total_unrestricted_cash
finance.operationally_available_cash
finance.bank_accounts_list

Source

I'mBoard editorial — authored and maintained by I'mBoard, first published 2026-04-01. No third-party standard is cited for this KPI; when one emerges, the definition is back-attributed and promoted to the published tier (a minor version bump). Read the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system, attribution rules, and dispute process.