Payment Calendar and Cash Flow Forecast

A payment calendar shows whether you will have enough money over the next few weeks — and if not, exactly when you will run short. It takes the cash you have in bank accounts and the till today, adds the payments you expect from customers, subtracts supplier bills, rent, payroll and taxes, and works out the balance for every day. A day when the balance drops below zero is a cash gap, and you see it weeks before it happens.

A cash gap rarely means the business is losing money. More often the money simply arrives later than the bills are due: a customer pays in thirty days, the tax is due on the 25th. If you see it in advance, one call to a supplier to move a payment date is enough. If you find out on the day, you borrow or pay a penalty. In ERPJS the payment calendar is built from your accounting: invoices and payments are already in the system, so there is no separate spreadsheet to keep.

What does the payment calendar show?

Four numbers at the top of the report tell you the main thing:

Under the numbers there is a row for every day when money comes in or goes out, and beneath it what that day is made of: the invoice number or the name of a planned payment, the contact and the due date. Click a number to open the document. The lowest balance and the cash gap are always calculated by day, even when the calendar is grouped by week or month: a week that ends in the black will not hide a deficit on Wednesday.

Where to find it: Modules → Cash Book (or Nominal Ledger) → Reports → Payment calendar. By default the calendar covers four weeks from today. If you do not see it in the menu, ask the administrator of your database to grant access to the report.

Where do the amounts come from?

The ERPJS payment calendar never asks you to enter anything twice — it reads your books:

• Money now — balances of the bank accounts and cash desks linked to your payment methods.
• Money in — unpaid customer invoices, each on its own due date. They come from sales, as described in order management.
• Money out — unpaid supplier bills, also by due date.
• Planned payments — money without a document: rent, payroll, taxes, loan repayments, customer subscriptions. A planned payment is a “what, how much and when” record that repeats every week, month, quarter or year — you set it up once.

Issue an invoice and the calendar already counts it. A payment closes the invoice and it leaves the forecast. How the money and debts themselves are kept is covered on the financial accounting page.

How do you spot a cash gap in advance?

An example from the demo database of a tool shop. Today there are 172,000 in the accounts and no gap. We plan to buy a batch of stock for 80,000 on 22 October, and the calendar recalculates the forecast at once. On 25 October a quarterly tax of 70,000 is due, and now there is 13,000 too little: a cash gap from 25 to 27 October.

The fix is in the same report: a customer payment arrives on 28 October. We agree with the supplier to pay on the 29th — the gap disappears, and the lowest balance is now 12,000 on 4 November. The decision is made a week before the problem, not on the day the tax is due.

What if a customer pays late?

You do not change the invoice. The calendar icon in the invoice row opens the “Expected payment date” window: enter when you really expect the money, and the calendar moves the invoice to that day. The due date in the invoice itself stays as agreed, so overdue reports remain honest. On a supplier bill the same window is called “We plan to pay” — that is how you move your own payment to close a gap.

A disputed invoice you do not expect to be paid can be marked “Do not count in the payment calendar”. It leaves the forecast but stays open in your receivables, and the calendar reminds you in a separate line how many such invoices there are and for how much.

Why are overdue invoices left out of the forecast?

Nobody knows when a customer who is already late will pay. If the calendar counted that debt as “today”, it would show money you do not have. So overdue items sit in a separate block, “Overdue — not in the forecast”: “Owed to us” and “We owe”, with totals. If you know when to expect the payment, set an expected date and the invoice returns to the forecast on that day.

How do you avoid counting paid rent twice?

A planned payment is not linked to the payment document: when the rent is paid, the record does not know it. So you mark the paid occurrence with the ✓ “Done: paid” icon right in the calendar row, and the calendar stops counting it. Future occurrences stay. Forget to mark it, and a past-dated occurrence moves to the overdue block as a reminder that the money may not have been paid yet.

From the same row you can create a cash payment or a cash receipt: the document opens already filled in from the planned payment — just check it and save.

Why not just keep a payment calendar in Excel?

In a spreadsheet every payment is entered twice: once in the books, once in the calendar. A customer pays, but the invoice still hangs in the calendar. A week later the sheet no longer matches the bank, and nobody trusts it. In ERPJS the calendar is rebuilt from the books: a payment closes the invoice and the invoice leaves the forecast. Grouping by day, week or month and export to Excel are built into the report.

The payment calendar answers “will we have enough cash?”. The question “are we making money?” is answered by management accounting with profit and margins. Why profit and cash in the bank are different things is explained in “Profit or Illusion?”.

Who needs a payment calendar?

• Wholesale and distribution with payment terms for customers and suppliers
• Service businesses with subscriptions or regular customer payments
• Manufacturers who buy materials long before the customer pays for finished goods
• Any small business with rent, payroll and taxes on a schedule

Frequently asked questions

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