Free Cash Flow Forecast Template for a US Small Business
- A forecast follows cash, not profit. The filled example in the file takes in $462,000, pays out $453,600 and still runs short in April.
- Federal estimated tax falls on 15 April, 15 June, 15 September and 15 January, and those four periods are not equal quarters.
- The June payment covers two months of income. The January payment covers four, and it lands after the year has closed.
- Sales tax you have collected is sitting in your account and is not yours to spend. Give it its own row.
- Forecast what you will collect, not what you invoice. An invoice raised in March on 60 day terms is cash in May.
Free Cash Flow Forecast Template for a US Small Business
A cash flow forecast is a month by month list of the money going into your bank account and the money going out of it. It answers one question. Can you cover next month. The file below is free, it runs 12 months, and it puts the four federal estimated tax dates on the months they actually land, which is the part every template written for another country gets wrong.
What's Included
What's Inside the Template
Blank 12 month forecast
One sheet, 12 columns for the months and a year column that totals itself. Seven money in rows and seventeen money out rows, already labelled for a small US business, including payroll taxes, owner draw, federal estimated tax and sales tax remitted. Every total is a live formula.
The balance chain
Type your real bank balance into one cell for the first month. After that each month opens with the closing balance of the month before, so a bad March carries into April by itself. That chain is the whole reason a forecast beats a list of bills.
The SHORT flag
A row under the closing balance reads ok or SHORT for every month. It is the line you scan first. A SHORT in month seven is eight weeks of warning, which is long enough to chase an invoice, delay an order or arrange a line of credit.
Filled example, a seasonal business
A second sheet, complete. A landscaping company with a dead winter, a busy summer and a real April problem. You can see which rows were used and what a finished forecast looks like before you touch the blank one.
Notes sheet
One page of plain instructions, the four estimated tax due dates with the income period each one covers, why sales tax gets its own row, and the IRS thresholds worth knowing. Print it and keep it beside you the first time.
Who Needs This Template
- Any owner who has wondered whether payroll clears next month
- Seasonal businesses, where a profitable year still contains months that do not pay for themselves
- Anyone invoicing on 30 or 60 day terms, where the sale and the cash are different months
- Single member LLCs and S corps paying federal estimated tax four times a year
- Anyone about to apply for a loan or a line of credit, where the lender asks what the money is for
- Businesses that collect sales tax and want it out of the spendable balance
Before You Download
Gather these items before filling in the template:
- Your current bank balance, the real one, today
- Last year's bank statements or bookkeeping export, so the seasonal shape comes from your own history
- Your recurring bills with the month each one actually hits, not the monthly average
- Outstanding invoices with the date you expect each to be paid, not the date you raised it
- Loan and lease payment amounts
- What you paid in federal estimated tax last year, because paying 100 percent of last year's tax is one of the two safe harbours
What a cash flow forecast is
A cash flow forecast is a grid. The columns are months, the rows are money in and money out, and the last row shows what your bank balance will be at the end of each month.
It is not a profit and loss statement, and the difference is the reason this document exists. Profit counts a sale when you make it. Cash counts it when the money arrives. A business can be profitable on paper and unable to pay its staff, because the profit is sitting in unpaid invoices.
The filled example in our file shows this happening. Over 12 months the business takes in $462,000 and pays out $453,600, so it makes $8,400. It still closes April $4,130 overdrawn.
The forecast is also the one financial document you build for yourself rather than for somebody else. A lender asks for financial projections, which look three years ahead and are written to persuade. A forecast looks a few months ahead and is written to warn you.
The one minute version
What goes in each row
Two rules cover almost every row. Money in is dated when the cash lands, not when you make the sale. Money out is dated when it leaves the account, not when the bill arrives.
That timing is what people get wrong. An invoice raised on 10 March with 60 day terms is May money. A quarterly insurance bill belongs in the three months it is charged, not spread across twelve.
| Row | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Customer payments received | Invoices you expect to be paid in that month. Use your own average payment delay, not your terms. |
| Cash and card sales | Money that arrives the same day. Card takings land one to three days later, which rarely changes the month. |
| Deposits and retainers received | Money taken upfront. It is cash now even though the work is later. |
| Loan or credit line drawn | The amount you draw, in the month you draw it. The repayments go on their own row below. |
| Payroll, wages and salaries | Net pay leaving the account. If you run two pay dates, some months carry three. |
| Payroll taxes you remit | The employer and withheld amounts you send on, on the date you send them. |
| Owner draw or salary | What you take out. Leaving this off is the most common way a forecast lies to its owner. |
| Federal estimated tax payment | Four dates, not twelve. The next section covers which months. |
| Sales tax remitted to the state | The month you remit, and only that month. Filing frequency varies by state and by how much you collect. |
Anything not on the list gets typed into one of the other rows. The labels are editable.
The four tax dates that decide your worst month
Federal estimated tax is paid four times a year, and the four periods are not three months each. This is the single thing the templates ranking above us do not handle, because most of them were written for the UK or Australia.
The dates and the income each one covers, read at irs.gov on 17 September 2026.
| Due date | Income it covers | Months of income |
|---|---|---|
| 15 April | 1 January to 31 March | 3 |
| 15 June | 1 April to 31 May | 2 |
| 15 September | 1 June to 31 August | 3 |
| 15 January, the following year | 1 September to 31 December | 4 |
If a due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday, the payment is due the next business day.
Look at what that does to a bank balance. There is no payment in February, March, May, July, August, October, November or December. There are two payments inside eight weeks, in April and June. An owner who divides his tax bill by twelve and sets that aside each month is short in April and holding money he does not need in November.
The April date is the cruel one for a seasonal business, because it arrives at the end of the slow season. In our example the company closes April at minus $4,130. Take out the $5,400 estimated tax payment and the same month closes at plus $1,270. The business did not have a bad April. It had a tax date in a bad month.
Two thresholds decide whether any of this applies to you. You generally owe federal estimated tax if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year, and a corporation's figure is $500. Self employment tax is 15.3 percent, made up of 12.4 percent for social security and 2.9 percent for Medicare, and Schedule SE starts at $400 of net earnings. Our guides to quarterly tax payments and self employment tax work out the amounts.
Sales tax is not your money
What to do when a month reads SHORT
A forecast earns its keep the first time a month reads SHORT. You are seeing a problem eight or ten weeks early, and almost everything you can do about it works better with that much notice.
Work down this list in order, because the free options come first.
- Chase what you are already owed. Pull your unpaid invoices and call the oldest. This is the cheapest money in the building and most owners underuse it.
- Move a payment you control. An equipment order, a marketing spend, your own draw. Moving one outgoing by three weeks fixes a lot of short months.
- Ask for terms. A supplier you have paid on time for two years will usually give you 30 days once. Ask before you are late, not after.
- Turn invoices into cash now. Invoice factoring advances most of an invoice's value and takes a fee. It costs more than waiting, and it is faster than a loan.
- Put a line in place before you need it. A working capital loan or a revolving line is easier to arrange in a good month than in a bad one. Lenders read the forecast you are building here.
One thing not to do. Do not spend the sales tax. It is in the account, it is not yours, and the state will want it on schedule whatever your April looked like.
How far ahead to forecast and how often to redo it
Twelve months monthly is the right default, and it is what the file gives you. It is long enough to catch all four tax dates and a full season, and short enough that the numbers are still guesses you can defend.
Switch to weekly when money is tight. If a month is going to be close, the monthly view hides the fact that payroll falls on the 15th and the big customer pays on the 28th. Relabel the month columns as weeks and forecast six to eight weeks. It is the same sheet.
Rebuild it monthly. A forecast written in January and never touched is wrong by March, because the invoice that was going to be paid in 30 days took 52. Replace last month's guesses with what actually happened, then roll the far end forward. Ten minutes, once a month.
The sheet works in Excel, in LibreOffice and in Google Sheets. For Google Sheets, open Drive, choose File then Import, upload the file and pick Replace spreadsheet. The formulas carry over, there are no macros and nothing to enable.
Frequently Asked Questions
About the Author
Senior Finance & Banking Editor
Richard is the veteran anchor of the site's financial content. Raised in the Midwest and starting his career in Chicago's commercial banking sector, he spent over a decade underwriting small business loans before moving into financial journalism. He doesn't get swept up in startup hype; he cares about unit economics, APYs, and fee structures.
Was this article helpful?
This template is a planning tool, not tax or financial advice, and it does not calculate what you owe. The IRS figures and due dates cited here were read at irs.gov on 17 September 2026, and special rules apply to farmers, fishermen and higher income taxpayers. Check your own position with a CPA or an enrolled agent.