Our cash flow forecast template is a free spreadsheet you can download as an Excel file or copy into Google Sheets. Put in your opening balance, what you expect to receive, and what you have committed to pay, and it shows your closing cash position month by month – so you can see a shortfall coming while there is still time to do something about it.

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Download the template

There is an instructions tab, one tab where you enter income and costs, a summary that fills itself in from them, and a graph of your closing cash position.

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Take the Excel version if you want to work offline or keep the file on your own system. Take the Google Sheets copy if you would rather share it with your accountant or open it on a phone – you will need a Google account for that route. The summary tab runs 12 monthly columns, and a graph tab plots your closing balance across them, which is the line you are really looking at: the month it crosses zero is the month you need a plan for.

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What to put in your cash flow forecast

Start with the number the whole thing rests on: the cash actually in your account on the day the forecast starts. Get that wrong and every month after it is wrong by the same amount.

Then build the two sides. On the money-in side, list what you expect to receive and when you expect to receive it: customer payments, a VAT refund if you are due one, grant money, anything you have drawn from a loan. On the money-out side, list what you have already committed to: payroll, rent, suppliers, loan repayments, insurance, and the tax.

The tax is where most forecasts for a limited company come unstuck, because the dates are not the ones you would guess. All three were checked on GOV.UK on 15 October 2026:

• VAT. You usually file every three months, and the return and the payment are both due one calendar month and 7 days after the quarter ends. So the money leaves a month after the quarter you earned it in, not during it.
• PAYE. Due on the 22nd of the next tax month if you pay monthly, and on the 19th if you still pay by cheque through the post.
• Corporation Tax. Due nine months and one day after the end of your accounting period, if your taxable profits are up to £1.5 million. That is one date a year, it is usually large, and it lands long after the year it relates to.

Put each of those on the row for the month it actually leaves the account. A forecast that shows VAT going out in the quarter it was earned will look comfortable in a month that is going to be tight.

Your budget is a good place to pull the committed costs from, if you have one. And the figure the template calls Net cashflow is your net cash flow for the month: everything in, less everything out.

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The mistake that makes a forecast useless

Enter money on the date you expect to be paid, not the date you sent the invoice. This is the single thing that separates a forecast you can act on from one that quietly lies to you.

It is an easy mistake to make, because the invoice date is the one your accounting software gives you. But a forecast is not a record of what you have earned – it is a prediction of what will be in the bank. An invoice raised on 1 March on 30-day terms, paid at day 45 because that is what that customer does, is April's money. Put it in March and you have built a forecast of a business that does not exist.

Our research, published in April 2026, found that 90% of businesses are affected by late payments, with the average small business owed more than £22,000. So for most companies the gap between invoicing and being paid is not an exception to plan around – it is the normal state of affairs, and it is widest where you have a small number of large customers who set their own payment terms.

The practical version: go through your receipts row by row and ask when that customer last actually paid, not when they agreed to. Use that date. If a customer has paid you late three times, their fourth invoice is late money in your forecast.

Two habits make this easier. Keep one row per customer rather than one row for 'sales', so you can see who is slow. And when a payment does not arrive in the month you predicted, move it rather than deleting it – a forecast that remembers being wrong gets better.

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How far ahead to forecast, and how often to update it

Twelve months is the right horizon for planning, which is why the template is built that way. You can see your Corporation Tax bill, your quiet season, and the month a loan clears, all in one view.

When cash is genuinely tight, 12 monthly columns are too coarse. The convention then is a 13-week forecast, built week by week: a quarter ahead, at the level of detail where you can see that payroll falls on a Friday and the big invoice is not due until the Monday. Accountants and insolvency practitioners reach for this one, and the reason is simply that cash problems happen on particular days, not in particular months. Our template does not have a weekly tab yet. If you need one, copy the summary tab and change the column headings to week-ending dates – the structure is the same.

Three-year and five-year versions of this spreadsheet exist on the internet, and we have not built one. Beyond about a year you are not forecasting cash any more, you are modelling a plan, and 60 columns of guesses look far more authoritative than they deserve to.

On frequency: update it once a month, every month, and put actuals next to the predictions as you go. Our research found that only 26% of small businesses forecast their cash flow monthly, and one in five do it annually or never. That means most owners find out about a shortfall when it arrives rather than two months before, and the ones it costs most are the companies with seasonal income or long payment terms, where a bad month can be seen coming from a long way off if anyone is looking.

If you want to know whether your position is normal for a business like yours, our Cash Flow Resilience Benchmark compares it against similar firms, free.

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A forecast also tells you where to push. If the closing balance dips every third month, that is your VAT quarter and the fix is to set money aside earlier. If it dips every month, the problem is structural, and our guide to cash flow problems is the better read.

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Who will ask to see your forecast

Other people will want this spreadsheet, which is a reason to keep it current even in a good year.

A lender will ask for it, because it shows what you can afford to repay rather than what you earned last year. HMRC will ask for something like it too: if you want to spread a tax bill over instalments, HMRC checks whether a payment plan is affordable before agreeing one, and a forecast is how you answer that. Our guide to a Time to Pay arrangement or a business loan sets out which of the two is cheaper.

There is a harder reason as well. The legal test for whether a company is insolvent is partly whether it is 'unable to pay its debts as they fall due' – section 123 of the Insolvency Act 1986. That is a cash flow question, on specific dates, which is exactly what this spreadsheet answers. Knowing the answer early is the point.

So what do you do when the forecast shows a gap in March? Usually one of four things: bring money in sooner, push a cost later, cut it, or cover it. Seeing it in October is what gives you the choice.

Covering it is where we come in. An iwoca Flexi-Loan lets you take the order, pay the VAT bill on time, and keep your team on the payroll through a month your customers have decided to be slow in – and because there is no fee for repaying early, you can clear it as soon as the cash arrives. If a VAT or Corporation Tax bill is due before your money comes in, that is the gap it is built for. We lend to UK limited companies.

Flexi-Loan in action: Dovetail & Slate

A seasonal dip put pressure on cash flow at Guy Walker's recruitment business, and he needed funding to cover VAT, salaries, and supplier bills until revenue picked up. He bridged the gap without committing to funding for longer than he needed, repaying as cash flow recovered. Read Guy's story.

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A forecast and a cash flow statement are not the same thing

A forecast looks forward and is built from your own estimates. A cash flow statement looks back and is built from what happened, in three fixed categories, and it goes in your accounts. The two need each other: the statement is where you find out that your estimates have been optimistic, which is what makes next quarter's forecast worth believing. If what you want is the single figure for how much cash your trading generates, that is operating cash flow.

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Cash flow forecast FAQs

Can I use the template if the company is not VAT registered?

Yes. Leave the VAT rows empty and the forecast works exactly the same. Add them when you register, because the first VAT quarter catches companies out.

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Should I forecast in the same spreadsheet as my accounts?

No. Keep them apart. Your accounts record what happened and should not change; a forecast is a working document you will edit every month, and editing a file that feeds your accounts is how numbers get broken. Pull figures from your accounts into the forecast, not the other way round.