Creating a business Cash Flow Forecast is very straight forward and can often be completed in less than two hours once you have had 

       an introduction to Awesome Forecast. As the forecast runs in Excel, you’ll find it easy to use and navigate around the software.

       There are also are some useful Tutorials Videos, which can be found through a link on the bottom of each page in the blue footer section. 

Once you have opened Awesome Forecast, here is a step by step guide to creating your forecast, 

      1. Assumptions

The cash-flow starts with deciding the key assumptions that your forecast will be built on, such as the number of years in the forecast Up to 5), start month (1st month of your financial year), VAT rates, Corporation Tax rates, Payroll Rates, number of comparitive years you want to show and whether you will wish to display a budgets. Once you have answered all the questions on the Assumptions page, click “Update Forecast Structure on all Pages”. Once this is finished, your model is ready to start working on.

2. Chart of Accounts

Create the chart of accounts you wish to use. For each account, select the VAT rate, payment days and make the account active. Once an account has been made active it will display in the Profit and Loss forecast and Balance Sheet once “Refresh” has been clicked in Control panel. This then only shows active accounts. Select “Display all Accounts” in the control panel to revert back to the whole library of possible account codes..

3. Enter your Opening Balance Sheet

Enter your opening Balance Sheet for the start of your forecast and check it balances. This is a crucial part of the forecast as this inflences the early months of your forecast for example Debtor/Creditor payments.

4. Enter your Profit and Loss Forecast 

Enter your Profit and Loss forecasts line by line for each month in your forecast.on the P&L page. You can only enter data in the yellow sections. Sales are entered on the sales anaysis 1 page.

5. Enter your Balance Sheet Data

Enter your Balance Sheet data on the various green tabs for categories that apply to your business for things like……,

Fixed Assets

Loans

Finance Leases

Dividends 

Corporation Tax Creditor

Inventory

Prepyaments and Accruals

PAYE Control accounts

Investment etc

The amounts and timings of receipts and payments in these will feed directly the cash flow forecast.

6. Review your Cash Flow Forecast

Review your Cash Flow foecast on the “Cashflow” page, paying particular attention on how the opening balances roll out i.e. Opening Creditor and Debtor balances (based on what assumption you entered on the “Assumptions” page. 

You can hide lines in the cashflow you don’t use by making the line inactive and clicking refresh in the Control Panel.

Ensure the timings are correct on irregular payments such as rates, rent and tax payments.

Review customer receipts and check whether the DSO’s by sales account are accurate.

Review supplier payments and DPO payment terms.

Review the tax rates such as VAT and whether they are assigned correctly to each line of the chart of accounts.

Check that all your Capex, Dividends, Loans and investments been included. 

Review your Balance Sheet Forecast on the Balance Sheet page which is calculated based on your P&L forecast, assumptions and Chart of Accounts criterea.

View the Cashflow graph on the “Cashflow Graphs” page to see your projection visually.

If you are using the 14 Day demo version, you can save your work by clicking on the save icon. Once the software has been purchased, you can save the data file on your computer. When you next open Awesome Forecast, you can choose which forecast file you wish to work from.