Cash flow forecasting software: 4 options for a small business

What cash flow forecasting software does, and what it can’t see

A cash flow forecast is a running guess at your bank balance for the weeks ahead. It starts with the cash you have today, adds the money you expect to come in, and subtracts the money you expect to pay out. The free Money Smart guide from the FDIC and SBA calls this a cash flow projection: an estimate of the future. A cash flow statement, by contrast, records what already happened.

Cash flow forecasting software does that math for you. Most tools connect to your accounting software and bank. They read the invoices customers owe you and the bills you owe, spot repeating costs like rent and payroll, and draw a line of your balance ahead. Many let you add “what if” items, like a new truck or a slow month, without touching your books.

Here’s the catch for a service business. These tools can only count what’s already in your books. A job booked for three weeks from now, a quote the customer approved yesterday, a deposit due when materials are ordered, a maintenance plan that renews in March: none of these is an invoice yet. So the forecast can look thin exactly when your calendar is full, or look healthy when the calendar is empty.

That blind spot is the main difference between your four options. Here’s how they compare on cost, what they can see and who keeps them current.

• A spreadsheet: free. It holds anything you type in, but someone updates it by hand every week. Best when one person owns the numbers and money moves in a few large pieces.
• Your accounting software’s forecast: no extra cost if you already pay for QuickBooks Online or Xero. It sees your bank balance, invoices and bills, and updates as your bookkeeping does. The right first step for most small businesses.
• A forecasting app: a monthly fee, usually with a free trial. It reads your books and adds scenarios and longer views, but booked work still gets typed in by hand. Best when you want to test decisions like a hire or a second truck.
• A cash view built on your job records: costs more up front and takes weeks to build. It sees booked jobs, approved quotes, deposits and invoices together, and updates as the work does. Best when most of your future cash sits outside the books.

Reference: FDIC and SBA: Money Smart for Small Business, Module 10: Managing Cash Flow (participant guide) (opens in a new tab)

How to build a 13-week cash forecast, whatever tool you use

The habit matters more than the tool. A weekly view of the next 13 weeks, about one quarter, is a practical place to start when your cash moves job by job. It’s short enough to be fairly accurate and long enough to cover several payrolls and a slow stretch. Add a monthly view for the year when you plan hires or big purchases.

The FDIC and SBA guide’s list of don’ts fits any forecast: don’t overestimate revenue, and don’t underestimate costs. It also tells owners to plan for seasonal swings and build a cash reserve. Then follow these steps, in a spreadsheet or in any app:

• Start with today’s cash: the balance in your business bank accounts, not the profit on your reports.
• List money coming in by the week you expect to be paid, not the week you send the invoice. If a property management company usually pays in 45 days, put that payment in week 7, not week 1.
• Add work that isn’t invoiced yet: booked jobs, approved quotes, deposits and progress payments due, and service plan renewals. Mark these as less certain than open invoices.
• List money going out by the week it leaves: payroll and payroll taxes, materials and parts for booked jobs, rent, truck and loan payments, insurance, software, and estimated tax payments.
• Subtract to get each week’s ending cash. That becomes next week’s starting cash.
• Set a floor, the lowest balance you’re comfortable with, like two weeks of payroll. Any week that dips below it is your early warning.
• Once a week, swap your guesses for what actually happened, fix any dates that moved, and add a new week at the end.
• When a week dips below your floor, act while there’s time. Invoice the day a job is done, ask for deposits on big jobs and chase overdue invoices. Push back a purchase, or talk to your bank early. The FDIC and SBA guide warns against putting off taxes, paying vendors late or avoiding your loan officer.

Reference: FDIC and SBA: Money Smart for Small Business, Module 10: Managing Cash Flow (participant guide) (opens in a new tab)

Option 1: a spreadsheet you update every week

A spreadsheet is free, and it can hold anything: booked jobs, a deposit you expect next Tuesday, the truck payment, a slow January. The FDIC guide includes a blank projection you can copy into Excel. It also points to templates from SCORE, a national nonprofit that mentors business owners, including a cash flow projection.

The cost is time and discipline. Someone has to copy in the bank balance, mark which invoices got paid and add new jobs, every week. Miss two weeks and the sheet quietly stops matching your bank. Formulas break when a row gets pasted in the wrong place, and usually only one person understands how the sheet works.

A spreadsheet fits when your money moves in a few large, predictable pieces, one person owns the numbers, and you mostly need the next couple of months. For example, a landscaper with two crews on monthly maintenance contracts can keep a clear 13-week sheet in one short sitting a week.

Reference: FDIC and SBA: Money Smart for Small Business, Module 10: Managing Cash Flow (participant guide) (opens in a new tab)

Option 2: the forecast inside your accounting software

Check what you already pay for before you buy anything. QuickBooks Online has a cash flow planner under Reports, then Financial planning. It shows past cash from your connected bank accounts and projects ahead from the invoices, bills and expenses entered in QuickBooks. You can add planned items, like buying a new truck, and set a threshold: a balance you don’t want to go under. Planned items don’t touch your books. QuickBooks says the planner isn’t available when multicurrency is turned on.

Xero includes a cash flow forecast in its US plans, and the plan sets how far ahead it looks. When we checked in October 2026, Xero’s pricing page listed a 30-day forecast on Early ($27 a month), 60 days on Growing ($59 a month) and 180 days on Established ($97 a month). Those are the regular prices; new customers were offered a discount on all three for the first 3 months. Xero says the dashboard shows predicted recurring transactions based on past data, and lets you add one-off amounts, like a late client payment.

For most small businesses, this is the right first step. It costs nothing extra and updates as your bookkeeping does. Its limit is the blind spot above: it forecasts what’s in the books. So it works best when you invoice soon after the work is booked and your books are current. Picking the accounting software itself is a separate decision, and our guide on how to choose accounting software walks through it.

References: QuickBooks Help: Use the cash flow planner in QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite (opens in a new tab) · Xero: Pricing plans (US) (opens in a new tab) · Xero: Cash flow manager (opens in a new tab)

Option 3: a forecasting app connected to your books

A dedicated forecasting app sits on top of your accounting software. It reads the same data, then adds what the built-in tools keep simple: weekly and monthly views side by side, several “what if” scenarios, and longer forecasts. Some of these tools are built for finance teams at much larger companies, so read the plan limits and accounting connections before the feature list.

These apps fit when you want to test decisions before you make them, like a new hire, a second truck or a slow winter, and your bookkeeper keeps the books current. They don’t remove the blind spot. Work that’s booked but not invoiced still has to be typed in as a planned item, by someone, every week.

Two examples with plans priced for smaller businesses, as their own pages described them when we checked in October 2026:

• Float connects to Xero and QuickBooks Online, and your revenue sets the plan. Its Essentials plan, for companies below £2m in revenue (the page showed the limit in pounds), was $130 a month billed monthly, or $105 a month billed yearly. It includes unlimited users, eight scenarios, a 13-week cash view and 12-month forecasts. Its Growth plan, for companies over £2m in revenue, was $265 a month billed monthly and offers 36-month forecasts. Float offered a 14-day free trial with no credit card.
• Cash Flow Frog connects to QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct, Odoo, Zoho Books and FreshBooks, plus bank feeds through Plaid. It sets the price by your annual revenue. For a business with up to $1M in revenue, it listed $69 a month billed monthly, or $55 a month billed yearly, with an early-bird discount on top. That plan includes forecasts up to 36 months, scenario planning and up to 10 users. It offered a 14-day free trial with no credit card.
• Two more names you’ll see on lists. LivePlan is a business planning app whose plans include cash flow forecasts and connect to QuickBooks Online and Xero, with a 35-day money-back guarantee. Fathom offers three-way forecasting, which ties your profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow together. Its pricing page sets the price by the number of companies connected and pitches one plan to accounting firms. If your accountant already uses Fathom, ask whether they can build your forecast there.

References: Float: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Cash Flow Frog: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Cash Flow Frog: Cash flow forecasting and planning software (opens in a new tab) · LivePlan: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Fathom: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Fathom: What is cash flow forecasting? A comprehensive guide (opens in a new tab)

Option 4: a cash view built on your job records

In many service businesses, the money that decides next month isn’t in the accounting software yet. It’s in the schedule, the quotes and the deposits. A custom cash view reads those records directly: booked jobs by date, approved quotes waiting for a start date, deposits and progress payments due, and service plan renewals. It shows them next to the open invoices and bills from QuickBooks Online.

It doesn’t need to be fancy. Often it’s one screen in the system that runs your jobs. It shows the next 13 weeks, money expected in and out each week, how sure each amount is, and a red line at your floor. The crew marks jobs done and the office sends invoices in that same system, so the forecast updates as the work does, and nobody retypes anything.

It only makes sense if your jobs, quotes and invoices already live in one system, or you plan to put them there. A cash view built on top of scattered texts and spreadsheets just moves the guesswork. If retyping jobs into your books is the bigger problem today, fix that first; we cover it in how to stop retyping jobs into QuickBooks.

Be honest about the tradeoff, too. A custom view costs more up front than any app, and it takes weeks to build instead of minutes to sign up. It earns its place when the apps can’t see where most of your money is written down.

What your forecast needs to see, by trade

The right option depends on where your future money is written down. A few examples, all hypothetical:

• HVAC and plumbing with maintenance plans. For example, a 6-truck HVAC company sells yearly plans that renew each spring, then buys parts ahead of a busy summer. If the renewals live in the job system, an accounting forecast won’t see them until they’re invoiced. Our article on recurring billing for service plans covers how those renewals get billed.
• Remodeling and contracting. A remodeler collects a down payment, then progress payments as each stage is done, while paying for materials and subcontractors up front. The forecast needs each signed contract’s payment schedule and the date each stage should finish, which usually live outside the books.
• Cafés and restaurants. Card sales arrive daily and stay fairly steady, so a spreadsheet or the built-in forecast often does the job. The swings are catering deposits, slow seasons and equipment purchases, which are easy to add as planned items.
• Property management. Rent arrives early in the month, while owner payouts and vendor bills go out later. A manager working for several owners needs cash by owner, not one total. Ask any tool you try whether it can split the view that way.
• Showrooms and shops with special orders. A deposit comes in when the order is placed, the supplier gets paid before delivery, and the balance is due when the order arrives. The forecast should show all three dates for every open order.

How to choose: six questions to answer first

Before you read another list of the best tools, answer these. Your answers point to one of the four options faster than a feature table does.

• How far ahead do you need to see? A few weeks for payroll and bills: the forecast in your accounting software may be enough. A year for hiring and equipment: a spreadsheet or a forecasting app with monthly views.
• Where is your future money written down? If nearly all of it is open invoices, any tool that reads your books works. If most of it is booked jobs, quotes and deposits, the forecast needs those records, typed in by hand or read straight from your job system.
• Who keeps it up to date, and when? Name the person and the time slot each week. A forecast nobody updates is worse than none, because it still looks right.
• How current are your books? An app’s forecast is only as good as your bookkeeping. If invoices go out days after the work is done, better invoicing software may help your cash more than any forecast.
• What does it cost in a year? Add the monthly fee × 12 and the hours someone spends updating it. Set that against what one short week, like a payroll you had to cover from a credit card, costs you.
• Can you get your numbers out? Check that you can export the forecast if you change tools. The QuickBooks Online planner, for example, exports to CSV, PDF or XLS files.

Reference: QuickBooks Help: Use the cash flow planner in QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite (opens in a new tab)

Where custom software fits, and where it doesn’t

If the planner in QuickBooks Online or Xero shows you what you need, use it. If you want scenarios and a longer view, run a forecasting app’s free trial with last quarter’s real numbers. We’d rather you start there than pay for a build you don’t need.

We build custom business software for service businesses: scheduling and dispatch, quotes and invoices, payments and a crew phone app, in one system connected to QuickBooks Online, Square or Stripe. A weekly cash view can be part of that system, reading booked jobs, approved quotes, deposits and invoices from the same records your team already uses.

If your jobs, quotes and invoices already live in one system, adding a weekly cash view to it is usually a focused fix. That’s typically $750–$3,000 over 1–⁠2 weeks, and if another team built that system, we review it first. If they don’t, the cash view comes as part of one business system: $6,000–$18,000 over 6–⁠10 weeks. An example is scheduling and invoicing for a crew of 5 to 10, connected to QuickBooks Online. These are our prices as of October 4, 2026, and what custom software costs explains what moves them. The first call is free, you get a fixed price in writing within 48 hours of it, and every launch includes 30 days of fixes.