The last project involves rolling out a personal finance advisory platform and includes the servicing and maintenance of the platform. There are two competing clients who would purchase the platform, however due to legal, licensing and competition restrictions Short Stop can only sell the platform to one of the clients. The first client is offering a payment structure comprising of quarterly payments of $200,000 over a 6-year period, starting at the end of the 1st quarter. The second client is offering a different payment structure compromising monthly payments of $60,000 over the 6-year period. Additionally, they will pay $30,000 at the start of each year for 6 years, starting immediately. Short Stop estimates that the personal finance advisory platform can be created from current embedded systems and augmented with other applications. The required computing hardware can be delivered and installed immediately after the client has been approved at a cost to Short Stop of $3 million. As such, the rollout of the project can be completed immediately after the choice of client. 

Given a required rate of return on a project such as this is a nominal 12% p.a., your manager wishes you to advise on which client Short Stop should choose to maximize value. 

Given that the clients offering to pay for the personal finance advisory platform are providing payment plans that are regular, detail, using diagrams if needed, how payments at the beginning of periods differ from payments at the end of a period. 

Provide some discussion on the present value and future value of these types of cash flows in terms of how they are calculated.