How the forecast is built

Every number in the forecast comes from something you can open and change. This is how they are put together, so you or your accountant can stand behind them.

What goes in

• Regular payments and income found in your bank history: rent, subscriptions, payroll, card sales, retainers. You confirm each one, and it continues on its own schedule.
• Open invoices and bills from QuickBooks Online or Xero, on their due dates.
• Payroll from the Staffing Model, person by person on your paydays (Standard and Plus). Without it, payroll comes from your bank history.
• Tax payments from the Taxes tab, and, on Standard and Plus, loan, line and card payments from Debt & credit lines.
• Anything you add yourself under Money In and Money Out.

Which date

• An invoice or bill lands on its due date. On Plus, an invoice from a customer with at least four paid invoices in your books is dated by how that customer really pays, and never earlier than its due date.
• A vendor you pay on your own terms, say ten days after the due date, has its bills dated that way, with the reason shown.
• Nothing lands on a weekend: banks move no money then. A payment or a deposit due on a Saturday or a Sunday goes in on the Monday after, and says so (“due Sun, Nov 1”). Payroll goes in on the Friday before, as payroll providers pay, and so does a bill from your books, since paying early is the careful side.
• An invoice or bill from your books past its due date moves two weeks out and is flagged, so the money is not counted on a day already gone; on Plus, an invoice from a customer who usually pays later moves to that day instead. One more than 90 days past due is left out of the forecast until you put it back with a date, and still counts in what you are owed or owe: on the Dashboard, its aging and the Customers and Vendors tabs, as in your books. One you typed yourself stops counting once its date goes by, and Flocuity asks whether it happened.

Which amount

• Open invoices are counted at 95% of their amount in the Expected outlook, because some never arrive in full. Each row shows both: $3,040, counted at 95% of $3,200. Bills are counted in full.
• Spending that is regular but not fixed, such as supplies, follows your recent averages.
• Payments between your own accounts, and card payments whose charges are already counted, are left out, so nothing is counted twice.

The three outlooks

• Expected: Open invoices arrive when due and 95% of them are collected. Recurring income and bills stay at their recent amounts.
• Cautious: Open invoices arrive 2 weeks late and 85% of them are collected. Recurring income runs 5% lower and recurring bills 5% higher by week 13, at the same pace after that. Sales tax moves with sales; rent, insurance, loan payments, other taxes, owner draws and transfers stay as they are.
• Optimistic: Open invoices arrive when due and 100% of them are collected. Recurring income runs 5% higher by week 13, at the same pace after that. Sales tax moves with sales.

The Lender Package’s cautious page uses the Cautious outlook and prints these same assumptions.

Reading the chart and the low point

• On Where your balance is headed, in the Simplified view, the line is drawn at each week’s lowest day, so a dip inside a week always shows. On the Detailed view’s Cash flow card the line is where each week ends, and the shaded band shows the lowest and highest day inside each week, because the rent can go out on a Monday before the week’s sales bring the balance back.
• The lowest point is a day, not a week: “$61,880 on Fri, Oct 2”. Switch to 4 weeks to see it day by day.
• Show history, beside the 4 weeks, 13 weeks and 12 months buttons, adds as much time behind today as the chart shows ahead, from your bank: the last 13 weeks before the next 13, and this week so far. Under the chart you get where the balance was at the start and where the forecast starts, its lowest day, and the days it spent under your cushion; on 12 months, the change since Jan 1. The Detailed view adds the money in and out behind it, draws each week where it ended with its lowest-to-highest band, and says how much moved as transfers between your own accounts. It starts off and stays the way you leave it. It needs your bank history, so with only a balance typed in it isn’t offered. The line is always your bank’s: if you typed today’s cash under Settings › Your numbers, the forecast starts from that and the chart shows the step between the two, and if your bank data is old, the line stops on its last day.
• Idle cash is what sits above your target balance (or your cushion, if that’s higher). The Idle cash card, in the Detailed view, shows it on an average day and the whole time, or you can type your own amount.

How close it has been

Every week Flocuity keeps a copy of its forecast, then compares it with what your bank actually showed. The Detailed view shows how close recent forecasts came, so you know how far to trust the next one.