Cash-Flow Forecast

Read your bank balance forward using live ledger data, timed by measured client payment behaviour, with scenario modelling and a back-test that grades the forecast against reality.

Setting Up a Forecast

Select 📈 Cash-Flow Forecast in the sidebar, then choose + Create Forecast. The configuration is short because the data sources already exist in your ledger.

1. Name the forecast for whatever it is used for
2. Select a View — weekly buckets for treasury work, monthly for planning
3. Enter the number of Periods to project
4. Confirm the Start date
5. Select the payment-timing basis (covered below)
6. Select which sources feed the projection
7. Mark it as the dashboard forecast if it is your primary one

Kantivo creates two comparison scenarios — Best case and Worst case — at the same time. The unaltered projection is referred to as Base case throughout the interface.

Payment Timing

Timing determines whether a forecast is worth acting on. Kantivo offers three bases for deciding when receivables convert to cash.

A client requires three or more settled invoices before their individual rate is applied; otherwise the practice-wide median is used. Where the file holds fewer than ten settled invoices in total, no inference is statistically meaningful, so Kantivo reverts to due dates and states this explicitly in the assumption bar rather than presenting a guess as a measurement.

Interpreting the Output

The chart traces projected closing balances across the horizon, marked with a zero line and, where configured, a minimum-balance line. The grid below resolves each period into opening balance, receipts, disbursements, net movement and closing balance.

Opening balance for the first period is the aggregate of all accounts flagged as bank accounts; subsequent periods open at the prior closing figure. Selecting a row reveals the underlying documents, each labelled by origin — invoice, bill, recurring template, adjustment or budget — with estimated items distinguished from executed ones. Receivables display the number of days by which behaviour analysis moved them.

Shortfall Detection

Periods closing below zero are shaded and summarised in a banner identifying the first shortfall period and the lowest projected balance in the horizon. Where a minimum operating balance applies — a covenant, a facility condition, or an internal buffer — enter it as the warning threshold and periods breaching it are flagged before they turn negative.

Recording Known Events

Events that have not yet reached the ledger are entered as adjustments: facility drawdowns, tax instalments, planned recruitment, capital expenditure. Use + Adjustment and supply a description, a signed amount (positive for receipts, negative for payments), an expected date, a confidence level, and optionally a repeat frequency with an end date.

Confidence carries real behaviour. Items marked committed are treated as executed fact and are excluded from scenario scaling. Items marked likely or possible are estimates and are scaled by scenario multipliers along with every other prediction.

Scenario Modelling

Selecting a scenario re-runs the projection under altered assumptions. Each scenario defines an inflow multiplier, an outflow multiplier and a collection-delay offset in days.

Multipliers are applied exclusively to predicted amounts — recurring templates, budget-derived figures and non-committed adjustments. Executed documents retain their face value under every scenario, since scaling an issued invoice would fabricate revenue rather than model risk. The collection-delay offset behaves differently and does move issued receivables, because delayed settlement is a timing question rather than an existence question.

Budget-Derived Fill

Distant periods naturally contain few committed documents, which can leave a long-horizon forecast looking artificially sparse. Enabling budget fill instructs Kantivo to substitute budgeted amounts for categories with no committed document in a given period.

Double-counting is prevented by design: any income or expense account already carrying an invoice or bill in a period is excluded from the fill for that period. Budget figures are apportioned across periods on a daily basis, so monthly budget lines distribute correctly into weekly buckets. A budget must exist for this option to contribute anything — see Budgets.

Back-Testing Accuracy

Use 💾 Snapshot to persist a projection. After the relevant periods close, 🎯 Accuracy reconciles those stored figures against actual movement across your bank accounts and reports variance in both currency and percentage terms.

The summary reports periods scored, mean accuracy, and directional bias. Bias is the diagnostic that matters: a persistently optimistic forecast is the one that eventually fails a payment run. Optimistic bias most commonly indicates a due-date timing basis where measured history should be in use.