How to forecast cash for the coming months

What is it for?

The Cash forecast lists the receipts and payments expected. The Cash grid adds them up by week or by month, starting from the bank balance, and tells you what balance the company will have at the end of the period.

The summary's Overdue to receive and Overdue to pay are what should already have come in or gone out: the grid counts them on the first day of the period.

A “what-if” scenario simulates, in the grid, a delay in receipts or payments. It does not change invoices or movements.

When to use it?

• Before a large purchase, to see whether the bank can cope.
• To see what the company has to pay and receive in the coming months.
• To ask “what if customers pay 15 days later?”.
• Do not use the grid to find out what each customer owes today: for that, open Management › Customers and sales › Who owes me.

Where to find it?

Management › Money › Cash forecast and Management › Money › Cash grid.

Before you start

• To read the forecast and the grids already calculated, the profile is Management.
• To create a grid or a scenario, you need a profile that can write to them: in the example, the System administrator. The Management profile opens the grid list without the New button.
• Done on 1 November 2026, in Empresa Demonstração, Lda.

How to use it

1. Open Management › Money › Cash forecast. The list has one line per expected receipt or payment, with Expected date, Description, Category, Direction (Receipt or Payment), Amount, Bank account, Origin document and Stage. There is also a Calendar view. The list includes invoices already overdue, with past dates (in the example, from 20/07/2026), and the estimated VAT lines.
2. Open Management › Money › Cash grid. If there are none yet, “Create your first cash grid” appears.
3. Click New. The From and Up to fields open with the next three months (01/11/2026 to 30/01/2027).
4. Choose the Granularity (the grid opens by Week) and click Calculate. The grid gets the number GRD/00001 and changes to Previewed.
5. Read the summary: Opening balance, Expected receipts, Expected payments, Expected closing balance and Realised closing balance. Below, the Buckets list has one line per week and the By category tab splits it by category.
6. To simulate a delay, create another grid. In the Cenário “e se”? (what-if scenario) field, type a name, for example “Customers pay 15 days later”, and choose Create and edit.... In the window for creating the what-if scenario, type the days in Receipts late by (days) and click Save. Click Calculate.
7. The grid now shows Closing balance in the scenario and a Balance in the scenario column. Print and Export XLSX save the result. Back to draft lets you redo the calculation.

Expected result

In the example, grid GRD/00001 has Opening balance €30,131.59, Expected receipts €7,060.65 (of which Overdue to receive €6,913.05), Expected payments €2,771.61 (of which Overdue to pay €2,696.87) and Expected closing balance €34,420.63. What is overdue falls in the first bucket (01/11/2026); the €47.14 of estimated VAT falls in the week of 21/12/2026 and the €27.60 in the week of 25/01/2027.

With the 15-day scenario (GRD/00002), the Closing balance in the scenario is €34,420.63, the same as the Expected closing balance, and the Balance in the scenario column shows the delay along the way: €29,254.34 on the first day and €34,495.37 from the week of 16/11/2026. The scenario window says: “This is a simulation. It only changes the numbers of the cash grid that uses it: no invoice, forecast line or bank movement is changed.”

Important notes

• What “Overdue to receive” adds up. The €6,913.05 in the example is €6,834.13 of customer invoices overdue up to 31/10/2026 (FT D26/27 to FT D26/32, the same ones Management › Customers and sales › Who owes me shows, without FT D26/33) plus €78.92 from a VAT line of 31/08/2026 (“Apuramento de IVA 01/08/2026 – 31/08/2026”, Direction Receipt). FT D26/33 (€147.60) falls due on 01/11/2026 and goes into Expected receipts, but not into overdue. That is why the total does not match Who owes me (€6,981.73): the forecast also has VAT lines.
• A delay in receipts does not make the closing balance go up. The scenario only postpones what comes in: the balance is lower in the first weeks and matches the expected one when the delay ends within the period. Use the scenario to see in which week the balance is lowest, not as a firm forecast.
• If the figures do not match, click Update from documents, in the Cash forecast, to recalculate the forecast, and click Calculate again in the grid.
• The forecast is not the total of outgoings. In the example the Cash forecast has no lines for salaries, Social Security, withholding tax or Corporate Income Tax (IRC), only invoices and estimated VAT: do not add up the list as if it were everything that will go out.
• The opening balance comes from the bank accounts. There is an Opening balance typed by hand field to correct it.

Common problems

I do not have the “New” button in the grid

• Cause: the Management profile only reads the grid.
• What to do: ask an administrator to create the grid, or create it with a profile that can write to it.