What is cash flow forecasting?
A rolling forecast built from your ledger, updated as the month moves.
A cash flow forecast that stays useful is one wired to the ledger, refreshed on a real cadence, not a spreadsheet somebody built once for a bank application and never opened again. The version we build pulls actual receipts and actual payments from the reconciled ledger every week or every close, checks last period's projection against what really happened, and only then projects the next stretch forward. That discipline is the entire difference between a forecast a business owner trusts and one that quietly drifted out of date months ago while the real bank balance told a different story.
The standard model runs on a rolling 13-week horizon for businesses with tight cash, or monthly for businesses with more headroom, refreshed against actual debtor and creditor movement each period. Thirteen weeks matters because it is roughly the window where a cash problem is still fixable — a client paying 45 days instead of 30, a supplier tightening terms, a superannuation guarantee due date landing in the same week as a big BAS payment. A monthly average can look fine for the quarter while hiding the exact week the account nearly runs dry, which is precisely the week a weekly model is built to surface.
Why it matters
| Without a system | With CapEasy |
|---|---|
| Decisions made on last year’s numbers | A forecast that is updated from the actual close |
| Pricing set by feel | Knowing which work makes money and which does not |
| Cash surprises that were visible months earlier | Numbers you can defend in a funding conversation |
What we need from you
Foundation
- A clean, current set of books
- At least a few periods of history
- Budget or plan, if one exists
Context
- Pricing and cost structure
- Headcount plan
- Anything you are about to decide
How it runs, step by step
- Planning & forecasting
- Cash flow forecasting
- Budgeting and re-forecasting
- Scenario modelling
- Profitability
- Job, product or service profitability
- Margin analysis
- Cost optimisation review
- Financial modelling & valuation support
- Three-statement models
- Unit economics
- Valuation analysis and supporting workings
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Cash flow forecasting, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Cash flow forecasting in Australia
Forecasting is not a BAS service — but a badly worded GST line can cross into one
Under TASA 2009 s.90-10, a BAS service is defined by ascertaining or advising on a liability under a BAS provision, not by who lodges the form. A forecast that shows GST as a scheduled outflow, sourced from historical BAS amounts and known due dates, stays on the planning side of that line. A forecast that independently calculates what GST is owed on a given period's transactions — rather than reflecting the registered agent's own figure — crosses it, regardless of who submits the actual BAS. We build every GST line from the agent's numbers, never from our own transaction-level calculation.
Superannuation guarantee is scheduled, not calculated
SG is due quarterly and the forecast treats it as a hard, known outflow tied to actual headcount and wage data from the ledger — not a soft estimate projected forward from a stale number. What the forecast does not do is calculate the SG liability itself; that figure, and any question about SG treatment for a particular worker (employee versus contractor, for instance), is the registered BAS or tax agent's determination, and we route the question to them rather than resolve it inside the model.
A cash flow model is not an ASIC solvency resolution
For a company, directors are required to form a view on solvency at various points, including around the annual solvency resolution. A cash flow forecast showing tight or negative projected cash under a stress scenario is a genuinely useful input to that conversation — it is early warning, built for planning. It is not the solvency resolution itself, and it does not substitute for the director's own judgment or professional advice on solvency, which sits outside a forecasting engagement.
Single Touch Payroll feeds the model; reporting stays with your registered agent
Wages, PAYG withholding, and super figures from Single Touch Payroll feed directly into the payroll line of the cash flow forecast, since payroll is typically the largest recurring outflow. We use STP data as an input. Reporting STP to the ATO and finalising it at year-end are handled by the business's registered agent or payroll provider — that lodgment authority sits with them, not with the forecasting engagement.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A rolling cash flow forecast — weekly for cash-tight businesses, monthly otherwise — refreshed each period from the reconciled general ledger rather than a static spreadsheet.
- A period-on-period variance line comparing the prior projection to what actually happened, with the gap explained in one line rather than left unexplained.
- A base-case, downside-case, and upside-case view, with the specific assumption that changes between cases stated plainly (a client payment delay, a facility that doesn't land on schedule, a signed but unbilled contract).
- GST and superannuation guarantee shown as scheduled outflows against their known due dates and the registered agent's figures, never as independently calculated liabilities.
- A debtor aging feed reconciled to the ledger, used as the source for receipt-timing assumptions rather than a separately maintained guess.
- A creditor aging and scheduled-payments calendar (payroll dates, loan repayments, the ASIC annual review fee where applicable) driving the payment side of the model.
