Cash-flow forecast
Profit does not pay wages — cash does. The Forecast screen projects your cash position forward from what you have already committed to, so you find out about a shortfall while you can still do something about it.
What it shows
Live position — your current cash across all money locations.
Committed income and committed spend — money already promised in both directions: unpaid invoices, open bills, recurring rules, scheduled payroll.
Scheduled inflow and scheduled outflow — when those are actually due.
Average daily income and average daily expense — your run-rate from real history.
Daily net drift — whether an ordinary day leaves you better or worse off. This one number is worth watching: a small negative drift is a slow leak that compounds while everything looks fine.
Reading the signals
Healthy momentum — inflows cover outflows with room.
Watch closely — the projection tightens at some point ahead. Not yet a problem, but do not add commitments.
Spending ahead — committed outflow exceeds expected inflow. Act now: chase receivables, delay discretionary spend, or arrange funding while you still have negotiating room.
Making it accurate
A forecast is only as good as what it knows about.
- Record recurring transactions — rent, salaries, subscriptions, loan repayments. This is the single biggest improvement you can make.
- Keep invoices current — with realistic due dates. Marking everything "due on receipt" when customers pay in 45 days makes the forecast optimistic and useless.
- Enter bills when they arrive, not when you pay them.
- Keep balances reconciled — the projection starts from your current position, so a wrong starting point is wrong all the way out.
What-If scenarios
Create scenario models a decision before you commit real money:
- Can I afford this vehicle if I keep the payment schedule?
- What if my largest customer pays 30 days late?
- What if I hire two people in March?
- What happens if sales fall 20% for a quarter?
Scenarios are sandboxes — they never touch your books. Build the pessimistic one too. Businesses fail from the case they did not model, not the one they did.
Model the late payment
For most small businesses, the highest-value scenario is "my biggest customer pays a month late". If that scenario breaks you, your real risk is concentration, not costs.
Forecast vs budget
They answer different questions.
Budget — what you intend to earn and spend. A plan you measure against.
Forecast — what is actually going to happen to your cash, based on commitments already made.
You need both. A business can be on budget and still run out of cash, because budgets are about profit and timing is about cash.