Cash Flow Forecast Template
Opening cash, money in, money out, closing position.
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This sheet is a working document. If you are redoing it every month, ledger software does the reconciliation for you and keeps the audit trail — that is the part a template cannot do.
For the period [date] to [date]
| Opening cash balance | $ 0.00 |
| Money coming in | |
|---|---|
| [add one line] | |
| Total in | $ 0.00 |
| Money going out | |
|---|---|
| [add one line] | |
| Total out | $ 0.00 |
| Net movement | $ 0.00 |
| Closing cash position | $ 0.00 |
Closing cash of $ 0.00 covers roughly —% of one period’s outgoings at this rate.
What is a Cash Flow Forecast?
A cash flow forecast sets out, week by week or month by month, the cash you start with, what is realistically coming in, what has to go out and what is left. Profitable businesses run out of money. An invoice raised in March that pays in July does nothing for the payroll due in April, and this is the only document that shows you that gap while you can still act on it.
Owner-managers use this to decide whether they can afford a hire or a lease. Finance directors run a rolling thirteen-week version as a standing control. Anyone applying for an overdraft, a loan or a grant will be asked for one, and the lender often specifies the horizon and format. Startups build it to work out their runway, charities use it around restricted funds and grant instalments, and households use the same structure when income and bills do not line up.
There is no mandated format for a management forecast, but the duties around it are real and differ by country. Directors face rules on trading while insolvent — wrongful trading provisions in the UK, the duty to prevent insolvent trading under Australia's Corporations Act, comparable duties elsewhere — and a forecast is often the evidence of what the board knew and when. The dates in it are set locally too: VAT and GST payment dates, payroll tax deadlines and tax instalments all differ.
A cash flow forecast is not a profit forecast. It excludes depreciation and other non-cash items, includes capital purchases and loan repayments in full, and shows sales tax moving through the bank even though it never belonged to you. It is not a budget either: a budget is a target you commit to, a forecast is your best current estimate. And it decides nothing on its own — it shows a shortfall in week nine, which is only useful if you act in week one.
What to put in a Cash Flow Forecast
These are the details this template asks for. Anything left blank is marked in red on the preview so you can see what is still missing.
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Business name | For example: Barton Supply Co. |
| Your address | For example: Unit 7, Barton Road, Columbus, OH 43212 |
| Period from | Free text |
| Period to | Free text |
| Opening cash balance | For example: 12400.00 |
| Money coming in | One per line: Source | Amount |
| Money going out | One per line: Item | Amount |
How to write a Cash Flow Forecast
Start with the cash you actually have
Open with the cleared bank balance today, not the ledger balance and not the balance including cheques you have written. Add any other genuinely available cash such as an undrawn overdraft, stated separately so it is visible as borrowing. If you have several accounts, list and total them. An optimistic opening figure quietly makes every week that follows wrong by the same amount.
Forecast receipts on the date money lands
Enter each expected receipt in the week the cash clears, not the week you invoice. If a customer takes 60 days and always pays late, model 75. Look at what each significant customer actually did last year rather than what the terms say. For consumer sales, model the card settlement date, usually a few days after the sale, and net of the processor's fee.
Load the fixed outflows first
Put in the payments that will happen whatever else does: payroll and the associated tax and pension payments, rent, loan and lease repayments, insurance, and the sales tax due dates for your jurisdiction. These are the dates that break a forecast, and they cluster. Once they are in you can see how much of each week is committed before any discretionary spending.
Roll the closing balance forward
Closing cash for one period becomes opening cash for the next, so the whole model runs off the first figure. Check the formula chain is unbroken across every column — a single hard-coded cell in the middle makes everything after it fiction. Show the closing balance on its own row and mark any period where it falls below zero or below your overdraft limit.
Test it against a bad month
Copy the sheet, cut receipts by a quarter or push your largest customer out by 30 days, and see what happens to the low point. If one late payment takes you below zero, that is the finding, not the base case. Note the earliest date at which you would need to act, and what the action would be, on the same page.
Common mistakes
- Entering receipts on the invoice date rather than the expected payment date builds a forecast showing cash arriving weeks before it does, which is exactly the error the document exists to prevent.
- Leaving VAT, GST or payroll tax payments out because they are not costs ignores some of the largest single amounts to leave the account all quarter.
- Forecasting from the ledger balance instead of the cleared bank balance carries an error forward into every subsequent week.
- Omitting the owner's own drawings or salary produces a forecast that survives only because nobody in it gets paid.
- Building one optimistic case with no downside version means the first late payment turns a plan into a surprise, by which point the useful options have gone.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make a cash flow forecast?
Set your periods across the top, then four blocks down the side: opening cash, receipts, payments, closing cash. Enter the cleared bank balance as the first opening figure, list money in and money out by the date each moves, and carry each closing balance into the next opening. The structure is that simple; the work is in the realism of the dates.
How far ahead should a cash flow forecast go?
Thirteen weeks is the standard short-term horizon, because it covers a full quarter of tax and payroll dates while staying close enough to be accurate. Twelve months in monthly columns is normal for planning and for lenders. Many businesses keep both: a weekly view for managing, a monthly one for direction. Lenders often specify their own horizon.
What is the difference between a cash flow forecast and a profit forecast?
Profit measures what you earned and consumed in a period regardless of when money moves. Cash flow measures money moving through the bank. The differences are timing on receipts and payments, non-cash items such as depreciation, capital purchases and loan principal, which hit cash but not profit, and sales tax, which passes through without being yours.
What is a rolling cash flow forecast?
One where you drop the period just completed, add a new period at the far end and update the model with what actually happened. The horizon stays the same length, so you keep looking the same distance ahead all year rather than watching your visibility shrink to nothing by December. Weekly and monthly updating are both common.
How do I forecast income that varies?
Break it into parts that behave differently — recurring contracts, repeat customers, one-off work, seasonal peaks — and forecast each on its own pattern rather than applying one average. Base the figures on what actually happened in comparable past periods. Then run a lower case, because the point is knowing how far income can fall before you have a problem.
This page explains general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between countries and, in some cases, between states — check what applies where the document will be used.