Monthly Cash Flow Plan Checklist

Run this Monthly Cash Flow Plan to create a report at the end of every month. Compare the monthly reports to monitor and plan your cash flow.

Introduction to Monthly Cash Flow Plan:

Preparation:

Gather financial documents

Calculate changes in the balance sheet

Analyze Cash Activities:

Determine the sources and uses of cash accounts

Create the Worksheet:

Create the header and columns

Label the rows

Populate the Worksheet:

Compute total cash receipts

Compute total cash disbursements

Calculate net cash flow

Prepare the final monthly cash flow report

Approval: Final cash flow report

Sources:

Related Checklists:

Introduction to Monthly Cash Flow Plan:

Generating a cash flow report every month enables you to compare data over time and plan your future cash flow.

While a monthly cash flow plan is useful for both business and personal accounting. If you are a business the report generated from this monthly cash flow plan, along with the income statement and balance sheet, contributes to your business's financial statement or annual report.

The primary concern of the monthly cash flow plan is to present an overview of the financial activity experienced throughout the month.

In this checklist, you'll be guided through the structure and method of creating a monthly cash flow plan.

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Watch the short video below for a brief overview of the cash flow statement.

A brief overview of the components of a cash flow statement

Preparation:

Gather financial documents

Gather important financial records in preparation for the Monthly Cash Flow Plan.

Use the subtasks below to guide you in preparing the appropriate documents:

1

Balance sheets - for the month in question
2

Income (profit and loss) statement for the month
3

Statement of changes in equity for the month
4

Cash flow from the previous month (if you have it)
5

Information about significant transactions during the month

It is best practise to add the data for each month into one document/worksheet, rather than creating a new one for every month. The image below provides an example of how to structure the worksheet.

Example of how to layout a Monthly Cash Flow Plan

Are you creating a new worksheet as part of this monthly Cash Flow Plan?

Calculate changes in the balance sheet

Before beginning to put the cash flow plan together, it's essential to review the current and preceding balance sheets to identify and calculate the changes in current assets and liabilities.

A simple way to do this create a spreadsheet with 3 columns (as seen in the example below)

Note down the changes in the form field below.

Balance sheet: note changes

Analyze Cash Activities:

Determine the sources and uses of cash accounts

Identify and examine cash revenue sources.

Highlight where you have received cash from during the month covered in this report.

Record data using the form field below.

Cash revenue sources

Similarly, identify and analyze all types of cash disbursements for the month and list them in the form field below.

Cash disbursements

Create the Worksheet:

Create the header and columns

Fill out the initial worksheet details using the form fields below.

You can download a free worksheet template below.

You can integrate the data from the form fields with your worksheet by using Zapier. To read more about how to integrate Process Street with Excel or Google Sheets check out these zaps.

Company name (or your Name)

Reporting period

First month opening cash balance

Example:

Label the rows

Use the lists of sources of cash receipts and disbursements to label the rows of the worksheet.

Cash revenue sources: {{form.Cash_revenue_sources}}

Cash disbursements: {{form.Cash_disbursements}}

Group cash receipts and disbursements into two, label the first group as cash receipts and the second group as cash disbursements. Each group should have its own sub-total.
The Net Cash Flow will be posted in the final row for each period covered.

Example:

Populate the Worksheet:

Compute total cash receipts

Source

The next step is to calculate the total cash receipts for the month.

Add the beginning cash balance to the sub-total of cash receipts to calculate total cash receipts.

Use the form field below to record your results.

Total cash receipts

Compute total cash disbursements

Next, sum up all itemized cash disbursements.

Total cash disbursements for the month

Once you've calculated your totals for cash receipts and disbursements, your worksheet should look something like the example below.

*The example below contains data from the two previous months, this is what your worksheet should look like.

Calculate net cash flow

To calculate net cash flow:

Subtract the total amount of cash disbursements during the quarter from the total amount of cash receipts during the same period.

Net cash flow

Net Cash Flow represents the final ending cash balance of the quarterly accounting period. As the ending cash balance, net cash flow becomes the beginning cash balance of the following period.

Prepare the final monthly cash flow report

Verify all calculations made over the course of building your Monthly Cash Flow Plan.

Once the final document is verified upload or link it to this checklist for safe keeping using the form fields below.

Upload final cash flow report

We recommend getting someone to double-check your final report.

It is important to get someone to review your report and numbers. In accounting one little numeric error can have serious consequences, thus, we really recommend getting someone to review this report.

You can use the 'Assign Members' dropdown below to assign this checklist to someone within your Process Street organization: Assigning a member will allow them to review the report and then approve it in the following task.