Cash Flow Forecast

Part of managing and maintaining a great business is knowing your businesses capital. It’s understanding how to estimate when a particular amount of cash will be coming into the business as well as how much cash will leave the business in a particular time frame. Usually it’s projected for one year. This helps determine if a business will be in jeopardy and if they will need a loan to progress, when they will need it, and how much. A spreadsheet is generated to keep track of the finances and is known as a Cash Flow Forecast.

How to Use the Cash Flow Forecast Template

This free Cash Flow template is easy to use. You can download it from this site and open it in Excel. This is fully customizable for any organizations use.

• Once you open the form, you will see it’s set up for an initial 12 months. You will notice there are three comments in the column labeled “Month”. This explains a bit more about how this forecast is used. It also explains about the income statement and their relation to each other.
• Your first section is the Receipts. This section is the in-flow of money into the company. This includes credits sales and loans.
• The next section is Payments. This is the out-flow of money from the company. This template will give you a good start on the necessary categories. You, however, can change the categories as you see fit for your organization. A few payments would include rent, office supplies, salaries, and advertisements.
• The Pre-Start column is the funding you are expecting to start with or be expected to pay out.
• Next, start entering the amounts you are expecting for each month.
• On the far right side of the spreadsheet it will calculate the Totals for you. It will also total each individual month below. Continue the process through the entire sheet being careful not to shade in any gray shaded areas. These hold the formulas.
• Once your spreadsheet is completely filled in, it will show you your Cashflow Surplus or Deficit. Those numbers will help you figure out if your organization needs additional funding and in what months.

Tips for Using the Cash Flow Forecast

Any negative numbers in accounting should show up in red text and in a parenthesis bracket. You can change that by right clicking the cell or cells and selecting Format Cell. In the Number Category select the one you would like to display.

The Cash Flow Forecast found here is also used in preparing an organizations business plan. Most start-ups and small businesses will use a Cash Flow Forecast.

Download: Cash Flow Forecast