What the forecast is made of
| Component | Source | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Cash today | Reconciled bank balances. | Fact |
| Money coming in | Open invoices, adjusted for how that customer actually pays. | Good |
| Money going out | Open bills and recurring costs. | Good |
| Expected revenue | Patterns in your history. | Estimate |
| Everything else | Not visible to the ledger. | Missing |
The value of the first three lines is that they are near-certain, and most short-horizon cash surprises are actually in them — an invoice you knew about, from a customer who always pays at 60 days rather than 30. Adjusting expected receipts by each customer's actual behaviour is where most of the accuracy comes from.
Cash flow
13 weeks · base case
Scenarios
A scenario applies changes to the base forecast — hire two people, lose the largest customer, delay a purchase, raise prices by five percent — and shows the effect on runway. Scenarios do not alter anything; they are a view.
- Model the bad one first. The scenario worth having ready is the one you would not choose.
- Change one thing at a time, at least initially. A scenario with six changes tells you nothing about which mattered.
- Check what the base assumes before layering onto it. A scenario built on an optimistic base is optimistic twice.
- Re-run after the close, when provisional figures become final.
A signed contract that has not been invoiced, a price rise agreed verbally, a redundancy planned for June, a tax payment on a date the ledger has never seen — none of these are in the forecast. That is not a defect; it is the boundary of what a ledger knows. The forecast is a floor to reason from, not a prediction.
What this does not do
CRM opportunities do not feed the forecast.
Payment dates are not known unless recorded as bills.
One base currency.
Scenarios are views, not stored versions to compare side by side.
Questions
How far out does it forecast?
Weeks to months. Accuracy falls off sharply past the committed items.
Does it use invoice due dates or payment behaviour?
Behaviour where there is enough history, due dates otherwise.
Can we export the forecast?
Yes.
Related
Budget against actual in erp.io CFO — setting a budget, reading variance, and the two variances that are not what they appear.
Accounting invoicingRaising, sending, chasing and settling invoices in erp.io — including how the customer record relates to CRM and how payments come back through the portal.