A cash flow forecast template is a spreadsheet that projects the cash coming in and going out of a business month by month, ending with the bank balance. ORM's free SaaS version for Excel and Google Sheets builds cash in from billings and collection terms, not revenue, then subtracts payroll, commissions and spend to show ending cash and runway.
Get the cash flow forecast template
Standard .xlsx, seven tabs, 24 monthly columns plus year totals, no macros. Opens in Excel, and in Google Sheets through Drive (Open with > Google Sheets) or File > Import. Yellow cells are inputs. Everything else is a formula.
Quick check: how billing terms change your cash
Same new ARR every month, same revenue, four ways to bill it. Enter your numbers to see cash after 12 months. Defaults are illustrative.
| New deals billed | Invoiced | Cash collected | Revenue | Deferred revenue | Ending cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All annual upfront | $1,200,000 | $1,050,000 | $650,000 | $550,000 | $3,050,000 |
| All quarterly | $750,000 | $600,000 | $650,000 | $100,000 | $2,600,000 |
| All monthly | $650,000 | $504,167 | $650,000 | $0 | $2,504,167 |
| Your mix | $945,000 | $796,250 | $650,000 | $295,000 | $2,796,250 |
With your mix, 12 months of new deals are invoiced at $945,000 and bring in $796,250 of cash, against $650,000 of revenue. Billing all of them annually upfront would bring in $545,833 more cash in the year than billing monthly, from the same bookings and the same revenue. Ending cash after 12 months is $2,796,250; the lowest balance is $2,796,250 in month 12.
Get The Forecast Brief
You just saw how billing terms change your cash. The Forecast Brief is a short email from Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, built on what ORM sees in its customers' forecasts.
What is in the template, tab by tab
The workbook forecasts cash the way a SaaS business actually receives it: deals are signed, invoices go out on the billing terms of each contract, and customers pay on their own schedule. Most templates that rank for this search start from a "sales" line and treat it as cash in the same month. That works for a shop. It does not work for a company that bills a year upfront in December and gets paid in February.
| Tab | What it does | What you enter |
|---|---|---|
| Start here | Steps, the formulas in words, and how bookings, billings, cash and revenue differ | Nothing |
| Summary | Ending cash at months 12 and 24, the lowest balance and its month, the first month below your floor, the month cash runs out, runway, and a year 1 and year 2 table | Nothing |
| Assumptions | Billing mix for new deals, renewal and churn rates, existing ARR by billing term, the collection curve, payroll load and commission terms | About 20 inputs, each with a note |
| Billings | Bookings by billing term, invoices by contract type, cash collected, receivables, and revenue and deferred revenue next to the cash for comparison | New and expansion ARR booked per month, services fees, and the renewal schedule of your annual contracts |
| Payroll | 80 roster rows, salaries by department and month, payroll taxes and benefits, headcount | Role, department, monthly salary, start month and end month for each person and planned hire |
| Spend | Commissions paid on your payout lag, eight non-payroll spend lines, capex, taxes and financing | Cash paid per line per month, in the month it leaves the bank |
| Cash | Opening cash, cash in, cash out, free cash flow, ending cash, headroom over your minimum, net burn and runway, and cumulative cash next to cumulative revenue | Nothing |
The horizon is 24 months. That is long enough to see every annual contract come up for renewal once and to plan a raise, and short enough to keep current every month. The example file is filled in for an illustrative company. The blank file has the same formulas and evaluates to zero until you type. Some finance teams call the same file a cash flow projection template; the mechanics are identical.
Why a SaaS cash forecast starts from billings, not revenue
Revenue tells you what you earned. Cash tells you what you can spend, and in a subscription business the two can be months apart. A signed deal creates billings when it is invoiced, cash when the customer pays, and revenue spread across the contract. Take one $120,000 a year deal signed in March, with a customer who pays 30 days after each invoice:
| Same $120,000 ARR deal, signed in March | Annual upfront | Quarterly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bookings in March | $120,000 | $120,000 | $120,000 |
| Invoices | $120,000 in March | $30,000 in March, June, September, December | $10,000 every month |
| Cash received by the end of August | $120,000 (in April) | $60,000 (April and July) | $50,000 (April to August) |
| Revenue recognized March to August | $60,000 | $60,000 | $60,000 |
| Deferred revenue at the end of March | $110,000 | $20,000 | $0 |
Revenue is identical in all three columns. Cash is not: the annual deal has collected more than twice what the monthly deal has by August. That gap sits on the balance sheet as deferred revenue, cash you hold for service you still owe. ORM's guide to billings vs cash collections walks through the same gap from the collections side. A template that forecasts cash from revenue gets the annual upfront company's cash too low and the monthly company's too high.
How common is annual billing? In ChartMogul's study of more than 2,500 SaaS companies' 2024 billing, companies with an average revenue per account of $1,000 or more drew 55% of ARR from annual contracts and 34% from monthly plans, and 76% of them offered a mix of terms (ChartMogul SaaS Billing Report, May 2025). The mix is a cash decision as much as a pricing one.
How do I create a cash flow forecast for a SaaS company?
Start from the cash you have, add what customers will pay you and when, subtract what you will pay and when, and roll the balance forward month by month. With the template, that is seven steps.
- Set the start. On Assumptions, enter the first forecast month, your bank balance and the minimum cash you are willing to run on. A floor makes the forecast answer a decision ("when do we need to act?") instead of just "when do we hit zero?"
- Load the existing base. Enter ARR billed quarterly and monthly, and on the Billings tab type the ARR of annual contracts up for renewal in each of the next 12 months. Your billing system or CRM has the renewal dates.
- Enter new bookings. Type new and expansion ARR you expect to sign each month, from your financial forecast or sales plan, then set how new deals are billed: the share annual upfront, quarterly and monthly.
- Set the collection curve. The share of each invoice collected in the month it is sent, one, two and three months later. The rest is written off. Tune it until it matches your AR aging (see the collection curve section below).
- Build the roster. On Payroll, one row per person and per planned hire, with the start month. Set the payroll load and the commission rate and payout lag on Assumptions.
- Enter cash spend. On Spend, each non-payroll line in the month you pay it. An annual software contract paid upfront goes in one month, not spread over twelve.
- Read the result and update monthly. Summary shows the low point, the first month under the floor and runway. Each month, replace the first month's forecast with actuals, check the ending balance against the bank, and roll forward.
Cash flow forecast example: a $6M ARR SaaS company
This is the worked example inside the example file. The company and every number are illustrative, made up to show the mechanics. It starts January 2027 with $6.0M of ARR ($4.5M billed annually, $0.6M quarterly, $0.9M monthly), $9.0M of cash and a $4.0M floor. It books $3.0M of new and expansion ARR in year 1 and $3.9M in year 2, billed 60% annual upfront, 15% quarterly and 25% monthly, with December the biggest month. Annual and quarterly contracts renew at 90%, monthly plans churn 1.5% a month. Customers pay 5% in the month invoiced, 45% a month later, 32% two months later and 15% three months later, and 3% never pay, an average lag of about 48 days. Headcount grows from 41 to 54.
| Illustrative example | Year 1 (2027) | Year 2 (2028) |
|---|---|---|
| New and expansion ARR booked | $3,000,000 | $3,900,000 |
| Total billings (invoices sent) | $8,141,612 | $11,021,815 |
| Revenue recognized | $7,341,737 | $9,986,702 |
| Cash collected | $6,864,123 | $10,060,738 |
| Cash paid out | $10,404,980 | $11,920,940 |
| Net burn | $3,540,857 | $1,860,202 |
| Deferred revenue, end of year | $3,308,625 | $4,343,738 |
| Accounts receivable, end of year | $1,913,237 | $2,573,662 |
| ARR in force, end of year | $8,365,845 | $11,272,510 |
| Ending cash | $5,459,143 | $3,598,941 |
Year 1 cash collected includes $790,000 of receivables the company already had on day one. Four things the monthly view shows that a revenue-based template would hide:
- December bills twice what it collects. December 2027 invoices reach $1,468,779, almost double November's $757,189, because the biggest bookings month and the biggest renewal month are both annual upfront. December collects only $764,959. The cash arrives in January ($1,049,819) and February ($886,117).
- Revenue runs ahead of cash in year 1. Revenue is $477,614 more than cash collected, because December's invoices are still in receivables at year end. In year 2 cash catches up and passes revenue by $74,036, and deferred revenue grows from $2,508,750 on day one to $4,343,738.
- The floor is crossed before zero is in sight. Ending cash first drops below $4.0M in September 2028 ($3,852,393) and bottoms at $3,579,925 in November 2028. The company never runs out of cash in the 24 months, but the floor says it should act by mid 2028, not in 2029.
- Short-window runway swings with billing seasonality. Runway at the trailing three-month burn is 19.5 months in November 2027 and 100.8 months in February 2028, with nothing changed in the business: January and February collect December's invoices. On the year 2 average burn of $155,017 a month, the $3,598,941 left at the end of 2028 is about 23 months.
That last point is why the template shows the low point and the floor, and not only a runway number. For gross and net burn, the burn multiple and runway scenarios, use the burn rate calculator with the net burn from this file.
Cash flow formulas, in Excel and Google Sheets
Every formula uses functions both apps share. References are to the template's tabs (Billings unless noted); month 1 is column B, month 13 is column N. Examples come from the worked example.
| Measure | Formula | Excel or Sheets | Example (illustrative) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual upfront billings | Annual ARR booked this month + annual ARR booked 12 months ago x renewal rate | =N9+B9*Assumptions!$B$16 | Month 13: $93,600 + $72,000 x 90% = $158,400 |
| Monthly plan billings | Last month x (1 - monthly churn) + new monthly ARR / 12 | =B23*(1-Assumptions!$B$17)+C11/12 | Month 2: $2,500 x 98.5% + $37,500 / 12 = $5,587.50 |
| Renewal invoices, existing annual | ARR up for renewal x renewal rate | =B15*Assumptions!$B$16 | Month 1: $180,000 x 90% = $162,000 |
| Cash collected | Each of the last four months' billings x its collection share | =Assumptions!$B$27*E26+Assumptions!$B$28*D26+Assumptions!$B$29*C26+Assumptions!$B$30*B26 | Month 4: 5% of $616,022 + 45% of $584,271 + 32% of $392,588 + 15% of $478,000 = $491,051 |
| Commissions paid | Commission rate x ARR booked the lag months ago | =IF(C$4-Assumptions!$B$41>=1,Assumptions!$B$40*INDEX(Billings!$B$8:$Y$8,C$4-Assumptions!$B$41),0) (Spend tab) | Month 2: 10% x $120,000 = $12,000 |
| Deferred revenue | Last month + subscription billings - subscription revenue | =B44+C24-C41 | Day one $2,508,750, end of year 1 $3,308,625 |
| Ending cash | Opening cash + cash collected - cash paid out + net financing | =B7+B10+B11 (Cash tab) | Month 1: $9,000,000 + $543,900 - $846,540 = $8,697,360 |
| Runway | Ending cash / trailing 3-month average net burn | =IF(B19<=0,"Cash positive",MAX(0,B12/B19)) (Cash tab) | Month 1: $8,697,360 / $302,640 = 28.7 months |
Opening deferred revenue is computed, not typed: a contract that renews in month 6 still has five months of last year's invoice unearned on day one, so the template takes each renewal amount times its remaining months over 12. Divisions are wrapped in IF or IFERROR, so the blank file shows zeros instead of errors.
How do you set the collection curve?
Pull your AR aging and the last six to twelve months of payments, and measure what share of each month's invoices was paid in the same month, one, two and three months later. Those four shares are the curve. The template turns them into an approximate collection lag in days so you can compare it with your DSO.
For a reference point, Upflow's 2024 data from more than 500 companies on its platform put the median DSO for SaaS companies at about 59 days, the top quarter of SaaS companies at 38 days, and the median across all industries at 56 days (Upflow, State of B2B Payments 2024). Net 30 terms do not mean 30 days. If your customers pay later than terms, the curve should say so; the forecast is only as good as that assumption.
Two settings matter more than they look. Enter opening receivables separately, by the month you expect to collect them, so day-one cash is not double counted. And keep a small never-collected share: a forecast that assumes every invoice is paid is a forecast that is wrong in the optimistic direction.
Payroll, commissions and prepaid bills, the timing lines most templates skip
Most cash goes out as payroll, and the timing of the rest decides the low points.
- Payroll load. Salary is not the cost of a person. Employers pay 6.2% Social Security tax on wages up to $184,500 in 2026 and 1.45% Medicare tax on all wages (IRS Topic 751), before health insurance, retirement match and state taxes. The template applies one load percentage on top of salaries; the example uses an illustrative 20%.
- Commissions on bookings, paid later. A B2B SaaS account executive's commission at plan works out to about 10% to 11% of new annual contract value, based on Bridge Group's 2024 and 2026 reports (see ORM's average sales commission guide). On an annual upfront deal the commission may go out before the customer pays. The template pays commissions a set number of months after booking; if your plan pays on collection, set that lag to your collection lag.
- Hires. A planned hire goes on the roster with a start month and costs cash from that month. Laptops and equipment go in capex in the same month.
- Annual prepaid vendor contracts. CRM, insurance and audit fees are often paid once a year. Put them in the month the invoice is paid, so the forecast shows the dip.
Monthly or 13-week cash flow forecast?
Use both for different jobs. A monthly forecast over 12 to 24 months is for planning: hiring, pricing and billing terms, when to raise. A weekly forecast over 13 weeks is for liquidity: which week payroll and a large vendor bill land before a big customer pays. This template is the monthly one. For the next quarter week by week, use the 13-week cash flow template, which builds receipts from AR aging and pipeline and places payroll and tax deposits on their dates. If your 13-week view and this file disagree on the cash at the end of a quarter, one of them has the wrong collection assumption.
Cash flow forecast, cash flow statement, P&L and burn rate
A cash flow forecast projects the bank balance forward. A cash flow statement explains, after the month closes, why cash moved by a different amount than profit. The others answer neighboring questions.
| Report | Question it answers | ORM page |
|---|---|---|
| Cash flow forecast | How much cash will we have each month, and when do we cross our floor? | This template |
| Cash flow forecasting (the practice) | Why do cash and revenue diverge, and how does finance forecast the gap? | Cash flow forecasting |
| Burn rate and runway | How fast are we burning, and is the burn buying growth? | Burn rate calculator |
| Financial forecast | What will ARR, the P&L and cash look like over 36 months in three scenarios? | Financial forecast template |
| Profit and loss statement | What did we earn and spend last month, and at what margin? | P&L template |
| Three statement model | How do profit, the balance sheet and cash move together in the plan? | Three statement model |
| Cash flow statement | Why did cash change by a different amount than profit last period? | Your accounting system |
The financial forecast template forecasts ARR from pipeline and retention and turns it into cash with one collection lag. This file goes one level deeper on cash: billing terms by contract, the renewal schedule, a collection curve and commission timing. Use the new and expansion ARR from the financial forecast as the bookings row here.
What Pete Furseth sees in the revenue side of a cash forecast
Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, works with B2B SaaS revenue and finance teams on forecasts and plans. Cash in starts with the revenue forecast, and these points shaped how the template treats it.
- Renewals are the most predictable cash. Pete separates renewals from new business: "Generally, you know the amount, it is either the same as it was in the current year or you add a price lift. And, you know when it is going to close, the renewal date." He sees renewals land within about 30 days either side of the renewal date. That is why the template asks for a renewal schedule by month instead of one churn rate.
- An invoice is not a renewal plan. "If you send them an invoice 30 days before their renewal and never talk to them, you are putting that renewal at more risk." Pete has seen that when renewals are run by a finance function that only sends invoices, gross revenue retention tends to be lower than with a dedicated customer success team. The renewal rate in your cash forecast depends on who works the renewals.
- Seasonality moves cash a quarter later. Across ORM's customers Pete typically sees Q4 as the largest quarter, then Q2, Q3 and Q1, and within a quarter "the third month is always the largest." With annual upfront billing, a heavy December becomes a heavy January and February in the bank, which is exactly what the worked example shows.
- Slipped deals move cash too. Pete names cycle length as the lever that moved first when quarters slipped in 2026, as buyers delayed decisions. One annual upfront deal that slips from December to February moves a full year of its cash by two months.
- Show a range. A board trusts a forecast that is "consistent, traceable, and framed with a realistic range." Save three copies of the file with low, on-target and upper bookings and collection assumptions, and show the low point of each.
Common cash flow forecast mistakes the template catches
- Cash from revenue. Revenue spreads an annual invoice over 12 months. Cash arrives in one or two of them.
- Collected on terms. Assuming net 30 means paid in 30 days. Use your real curve.
- One churn rate for everyone. Annual contracts churn at renewal dates, monthly plans every month. The cash effect lands at different times.
- Commissions when expensed. If commissions are capitalized, the P&L shows the amortized cost. The bank pays the full payout on the plan's schedule.
- Runway from one quarter's burn. In a business with seasonal annual billing, a short window can double or halve runway. Look at the low point and a full year's burn.
- No floor. Planning to the month cash hits zero leaves no time to raise or cut. Set the minimum you will run on and plan to that.
ORM's take on forecasting cash in
Most of a SaaS cash forecast is easy to get right. Payroll, rent and software are known. The hard line is cash in, and it is decided by which deals close, when, at what size, and which renewals come back. Get those wrong and the collection curve faithfully delays the wrong number.
ORM forecasts new business, expansion and renewals from your own CRM data and updates the forecast as the quarter moves, so the bookings row in your cash forecast reflects the deals that are actually likely to close and when. ORM targets 95% forecast accuracy on the forecasts it builds.
Common questions
What does a cash flow forecast include?
A cash flow forecast includes the opening cash balance, every expected receipt (customer payments, financing), every expected payment (payroll, commissions, vendors, rent, taxes, capital spending) and the ending balance for each period. For a SaaS company the receipts come from invoices and collection timing, so the forecast also needs billing terms, renewal dates and how fast customers pay.
What is the structure of cash flow?
Cash flow has three parts: operating activities (cash from customers minus cash paid to run the business), investing activities (equipment, capitalized software, acquisitions) and financing activities (equity raised, debt drawn and repaid). A forecast follows the same order and ends each month with a cash balance that becomes the next month's opening balance.
How do you forecast free cash flow?
Forecast operating cash flow first: cash collected from customers minus cash paid for payroll, commissions, vendors and taxes. Then subtract capital expenditures. The result is free cash flow, the cash the business generates or burns before any financing. In the template it is the free cash flow row on the Cash tab, and its negative is net burn.
What are the 7 steps of forecasting?
A common version is: set the goal and horizon, gather history, choose the method, set the assumptions, build the model, check it against actuals, and update it on a schedule. For cash, that means a 12 to 24 month monthly horizon, AR aging and bank history, billing and collection assumptions, then a monthly variance check against the bank balance.
Can I use this cash flow template in Google Sheets?
The file is a standard .xlsx with no macros, so it opens in Google Sheets. Upload it to Google Drive, then choose Open with, Google Sheets, or use File, then Import, in a blank sheet. The formulas use functions both apps share, such as SUM, IF, INDEX, MATCH, EDATE, SUMIF and COUNTIF, so the forecast recalculates the same way.
How far ahead should a cash flow forecast go?
Most SaaS companies run a monthly forecast 12 to 24 months out for planning, hiring and fundraising, and a weekly 13-week forecast when cash is tight or payroll timing matters. This template covers 24 months, long enough to see a full renewal cycle of annual contracts and the next raise, and short enough to update every month.
Know the bookings before you forecast the cash
This template turns bookings into cash. ORM shows, week by week, which bookings are likely to land this quarter.
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