See exactly which month you might run short of cash before it happens.
Finance & SpreadsheetsPDF · 7 pages· v1.0
4.6A practical guide to building a rolling 12-month cash-flow forecast in a spreadsheet, written for small-business owners, freelancers and side-project founders. A cash-flow forecast is different from a profit-and-loss statement: it tracks money actually entering and leaving your bank account by date, so you can spot a shortfall while you still have time to act. Profitable businesses fail because they run out of cash at the wrong moment. This guide teaches you the difference between profit and cash, then walks you through building a month-by-month forecast with an opening balance, expected inflows, expected outflows and a closing balance that carries into the next month. It is written for non-accountants. You will learn how to estimate timing (not just amounts), how to handle invoices that get paid late, how to model VAT/sales-tax that you collect and later remit, and how to run a simple best-case / worst-case scenario without rebuilding the sheet. The outcome is a forecast you can update in ten minutes a week that answers one question reliably: do I have enough cash to cover what is coming? You own the file outright, no subscription and no data leaves your computer.
P&L shows whether you are profitable over a period. Cash flow shows whether you have money in the bank on a given date. The guide explains the difference with a worked example where a profitable business still runs out of cash.
Yes. The guide covers estimating inflows and outflows from assumptions when you have no past data, and how to tighten the estimates as real numbers come in.
Yes. There is a section on treating tax you collect as a future outflow so you are never surprised by a remittance you already spent.
Any spreadsheet. All formulas use SUM and simple cell references that work in Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice Calc.
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