How to cash flow: forecast and spread your costs by month

Cash flow (also called forecasting your costs) is where you spread each contract's cost across the months you expect to pay it. This shows how much money you need each month, so you can plan your finance and loan payments.

Before you start: add your service providers and contracts in Cost Management, and set up your Timeline.

Step by step

1. Go to Financial → Cost Management and click the Cashflow tab (the last tab along the top).
2. Set the Start and End months to cover your whole build. Click Apply.
3. Under Outgoing, click the arrow next to a category (e.g. Construction) to see each service provider.
4. Check your Timeline to see when that provider's work will happen.
5. Click in the FCST (forecast) box for a month and type what you expect to pay that month. Click away to save.
6. Repeat for each month that provider will be paid. Watch Forecast Remaining go down as you add amounts.
7. Keep going until Forecast Remaining shows $0 (or —). This means the full cost has been spread across the months.
8. Repeat for every service provider, and for Contingency.
9. Check the chart at the top to see your spending month by month.

Getting Forecast Remaining to $0

• Forecast Remaining is the cost you still need to spread across the months.
• If it is more than $0, add more to your monthly forecasts.
• If it shows a negative number, your months add up to more than the cost. Lower one or more months.
• Check the date range covers the whole build. Amounts outside the months shown still count.

Tips

• Builder payments usually follow the stages in your contract (e.g. deposit, base, frame, lock-up, fixing, completion).
• You don't need to enter what you've paid. The ACT (actual) amounts fill in from your Progress Payments and Fees & Supplier Invoices.
• Update your cash flow whenever your Timeline changes, or a variation is added.