Cashflow forecast

The cashflow forecast projects the actual cash you expect to collect, period by period, from the subscriptions you have today. Where the MRR forecast smooths revenue into an even monthly line, the cashflow forecast is deliberately lumpy: it puts each renewal in the period it is actually billed, so an annual plan lands as one payment on its renewal date rather than being spread across twelve months.

It answers a different question from MRR. MRR tells you how much recurring revenue you have earned; the cashflow forecast tells you when the money arrives in your account — which is what you need for runway, hiring and spend decisions.

Overview

The forecast walks every active subscription forward along its own billing schedule and drops each renewal into the period it falls due. The result has three parts:

A chart — expected cash per period, stacked by billing frequency (monthly, yearly, quarterly, weekly plans), plus optional one-time payments and refunds.
A table — the same figures period by period, with each row drillable down to the individual customers renewing.
A summary strip — total forecast cash over the horizon, average per month, and how concentrated your cash is in annual renewals.

The chart and table share one timeline, so a spike in the chart lines up with the customers behind it in the table.

How the forecast is calculated

The cashflow forecast is a schedule projection, not a statistical one. It takes each subscription you have right now and repeats its billing cycle into the future:

Start from the next billing date. Each subscription has a known next renewal date. From there, the next payment is placed one billing cycle later, and the one after that a cycle later again, out to the end of your horizon.
Bill the current amount. Each projected payment is the subscription's current recurring amount for that cycle (monthly plans bill their monthly amount, annual plans bill a full year at once, and so on).
Step up expiring discounts. If a subscription is on a discount with a known end date, payments after that date are projected at the full list price, not the discounted price.
Stop at scheduled cancellations. If a subscription is already set to cancel on a future date, no payments are projected beyond it.

Because it only projects the subscriptions that exist today, the cashflow forecast is a committed-cash view: it does not assume new customers. To model new business, growth levers and pricing changes, use the MRR forecast instead. The two are complementary — one shows the cash your current book will generate, the other stress-tests where the business could go.

One-time payments and refunds

Two optional lines fill in the non-recurring parts of your cashflow:

One-time payments — a per-period estimate based on the average of your last six months of one-off charges.
Refunds — a per-period estimate based on the average of your last six months of refunds, shown as money leaving.

Both are toggles, off by default, so you can see pure subscription cash first and layer the estimates on when you want a fuller picture.

Accounting for delays and failures

Not every invoice is paid the day it is issued, and some are never paid at all. The Account for delays and failures toggle makes the forecast reflect how your customers actually pay:

Payment delay — each customer's cash is shifted by the average gap GrowPanel has measured between their invoices being issued and being paid. A customer who consistently pays two weeks late has their projected cash moved two weeks later.
Permanent failures — a share of expected cash is deducted for payments that fail and are never recovered (typically expired or declined cards). This is measured from your own history: invoices that failed and never reached a successful state.

The note under the toggle spells out the assumptions it is applying — what share of your cash is invoice-based and how long it typically takes to land, plus the permanent-failure rate being deducted. With the toggle off, the forecast assumes every renewal is collected on its due date; with it on, the forecast is more conservative and more realistic for planning.

Reading the chart

Each bar is one period's expected cash, stacked by billing frequency so you can see what drives it:

Monthly plans, Yearly plans, Quarterly plans and Weekly plans each get their own colour.
Annual renewals are counted in full in the period they bill, not spread across the year — this is why cashflow charts spike around your big renewal months.
One-time and Refunds appear as their own segments when those toggles are on.

Switch the interval (week, month, quarter, year) to zoom the timeline, and use the horizon dropdown to change how far ahead you project.

Reading the table

The table mirrors the chart, one column per period:

A row for each billing frequency (Monthly plans, Yearly plans, and so on), with the number of customers renewing shown alongside the amount.
One-time and Refunds estimate rows when enabled.
Total cash in — the sum for the period.

The billing-frequency rows are drillable: click any cell to see exactly which customers are renewing in that period and for how much, so a forecast number always ties back to named accounts.

Currency, segments and filters

The cashflow forecast honours the same controls as your other reports: switch base currency, apply a segment, or filter by plan, country and custom variables. Everything is recomputed on the filtered set, so you can forecast the cash from a single plan, region or segment in isolation.

A note on coverage

The forecast projects subscriptions that have a known billing schedule and renewal date. Customers who carry recurring revenue but no captured renewal date — for example some imported or manually maintained records — are not placed on the timeline, so their cash is not projected here. If a large share of your revenue is missing, re-syncing those customers pulls their current billing schedule from your provider.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my cashflow so lumpy, with big spikes some months? Annual and quarterly plans are counted in full in the period they bill, not spread out. So the months your large annual renewals fall due show up as spikes, and the months around them look quiet. That is deliberate — the whole point of a cashflow view is to show when the money actually lands, which is exactly the information an MRR chart smooths away.

Why does it not include the new customers I expect to win? The cashflow forecast projects only the subscriptions you have today — it is a committed-cash view. You cannot collect cash from customers you have not signed yet, so the forecast does not invent them. To model new business, growth and pricing, use the MRR forecast instead. The two answer different questions: one is "what could the business become," the other is "what will my current book actually pay me, and when."

Some customers are missing and my total looks low. The forecast can only place a subscription on the timeline if it has a known billing schedule and renewal date. Customers who carry recurring revenue but no captured renewal date — often older imported or manually maintained records — are left out rather than guessed at. Re-syncing those customers pulls their current schedule from your provider and brings them into the forecast. If a big share of your revenue is missing, that is almost always the cause.

What does "Account for delays and failures" actually change? Two things, both measured from your own history: it shifts each customer's cash by the average gap between their invoices being issued and paid (so a habitually-late payer's cash moves later), and it deducts a share for payments that fail and are never recovered (typically expired or declined cards). With the toggle off, every renewal is assumed collected on its due date. Turn it on for a more conservative, planning-ready number.

Why does the total not match my MRR × 12 or my ARR? Because cashflow is not MRR. An annual plan bills a whole year in one month and nothing for the next eleven; discounts, refunds and payment timing all move the cash around. MRR and ARR are smoothed measures of recurring revenue; this is money arriving in your bank account, which is lumpier by nature.

Does it forecast churn? It stops projecting a subscription at a scheduled cancellation date, if one is set, but it does not predict unplanned churn — it is a view of the cash your current book will generate. Expected churn and expansion belong to the MRR forecast.

What happens to a subscription on a discount? If the discount has a known end date, payments after that date are projected at the full list price. Future price changes that are not already scheduled are not assumed.

MRR forecast — a statistical projection of recurring revenue, with levers for new business, retention and pricing.
Cashflow report — the actual cash you have already collected, broken down the same way.
CMRR — a forward view of the committed revenue changes you already know about.