Cash decisions need payment dates, not invoice totals

An invoice tells you what a customer owes. It does not tell you what is available to spend today. For a service business, the useful question is often whether wages, subcontractors and other commitments fall due before the customer payment arrives.

Consider a fictional business with £700 opening bank cash. A £1,500 payment leaves £800 below zero; a second £1,500 payment takes the gap to £2,300. A later £4,000 customer receipt brings the projected closing balance to £1,700. Looking only at the final balance hides the period when the business needs to cover its obligations. These are illustrative expectations, not transactions or a funding recommendation.

In Owner Support’s 13-week cash schedule, enter the opening balance with its as-of date, then add expected inflows and committed outflows on the dates you have checked. Include relevant costs and other payments yourself; the tool does not discover them from a bank account or accounting package. Review the earliest projected gap and the lowest daily closing balance. Move a customer payment later to see what changes, without changing the invoice or the obligation itself.

Keep expected cash separate from confirmed receipts. Record money as received only after you have checked the actual payment. When you update opening cash, remove expectations already included in that balance so they are not counted twice. Use the forecast to decide what to investigate next: confirm payment timing, review spending or discuss the gap with your adviser. It is a planning view under your assumptions, not statutory profit, a bank reconciliation or tax advice.

The date money moves can matter as much as the amount.