Cash flow

The Cash flow view spreads the job across the programme, so you can see what money is needed when — and when it comes back in — rather than only what the job costs in total.

Three sections

Section	Shows
Expenses	What the job costs, over time
Income	What you expect to claim, from the contract stages
Net Cash Position	The two combined — the line that matters

All three sit on the same period columns, so a month’s outgoings line up with that month’s income and the net figure underneath.

The net line is the one to read. Expenses alone tell you what the job costs; the net position tells you how much of your own money is in it at any point, which is the number that decides whether you can take on the next job.

Where the expense figures come from

Input	From
When the cost happens	Task dates in the schedule
How much	The task’s cost, or its linked order
When it is paid	Payment Method and Payment Extra days

The third is the one people skip, and it is what separates a cost curve from a cash curve. Work done in week 6 on 30-day terms is paid in week 10, and the gap is exactly what you have to fund.

Where the income figures come from

Income is built from the project’s contract stages — each stage’s value, on its expected date.

Two things sharpen it:

A stage linked to a schedule task takes its date from that task. Link the lock-up stage to the lock-up task and the income moves whenever the programme moves, instead of sitting on a date somebody typed in March.

A linked stage is only “ready” once its task is 100% complete. So the view can distinguish income you can actually claim now from income that is still ahead of the work. Stages with no linked task are always treated as ready, since there is nothing to wait on.

Cash flow does not raise claims

It projects income; it does not create anything. Progress claims stay entirely manual — see Raising a claim. A stage showing as ready here is a prompt to go and raise the claim, not a sign that one exists.

Making it worth looking at

The view is only as good as the tasks behind it. Three things:

Link orders to tasks. A task costed from its order carries a real committed figure. One with a typed estimate carries a guess. See Resources and cost.

Set payment terms. Without them, everything appears to be paid the day the work happens, which no builder has ever experienced.

Keep dates current. A schedule three weeks out of date produces a cash flow three weeks out of date, and it will look plausible.

Link contract stages to schedule tasks. This is what makes the income side honest. An unlinked stage sits on whatever date was typed when the contract was set up; a linked one moves with the programme, so when the frame slips a fortnight the frame claim slips with it and the net position updates itself. See Contract stages.

Reading it

The peak is the most cash the job needs at once. That is the number that decides whether you can take the job on, and it is rarely at the end.

The steep sections are where several expensive trades coincide. Worth knowing about in advance, and sometimes worth re-sequencing to smooth.

The net position is the real question, and the view works it out for you. A job that pays at lock-up but has its biggest outflow in the fortnight before is asking you to fund a gap — which is fine if you know, and a problem if you find out in the fortnight.

The S-Curve

The table shows what moves each month. S-Curve shows where the job is up to — both sides added up as the job runs, drawn as two lines:

• Money out, GST included, so it compares like with like against what you claim.
• Money in, from the contract stages.

It is called an S-curve because that is the shape spend makes on a job that starts slowly, runs hard through the middle, and tails off at the end.

The gap between the two lines is your money in the job. Where the money-out line sits above the money-in line, you are paying out ahead of being paid, and the vertical distance is how much of your own cash is in it at that point. A dotted today line shows where you are now.

It follows whatever the page is set to, so switching between Weekly and Monthly, or filtering to one stage, redraws it. Hover any point for that period’s three figures, Show the numbers puts the same thing in a table, and Export to Excel downloads it.

Worked example

The Hendricks extension, month by month — this is the shape the three sections show:

Month	Outgoing	Claim due	Stage
Oct	$18,400	$11,069	Deposit
Nov	$34,900	$22,138	Base
Dec	$28,600	$33,207	Frame
Jan	$12,200	—	—
Feb	$41,300	$77,483	Lock-up
Mar	$38,700	$55,345	Fixing
Apr	$17,500	$22,138	Completion

November is the pinch. $34,900 going out against $22,138 coming in, on top of October’s shortfall — so roughly $20,000 of the builder’s own money is in the job before the frame claim lands in December.

January is the opposite: little happening, nothing to claim. Worth knowing before committing to anything else that month.

None of that is visible from the contract total. It is only visible from the shape.

Reducing the peak

Three levers, in order of how often they work:

1. Claim promptly. A claim raised the day a stage is reached rather than a fortnight later moves the whole income side left. Cheapest fix available.
2. Negotiate supplier terms. Moving a large trade from 14 days to 30 shifts a significant outflow past a claim.
3. Re-sequence. Sometimes expensive trades can be separated so they do not coincide. Constrained by the critical path, and worth checking on the Gantt before assuming it is possible.

Across several jobs

The peak that matters is not any one job’s — it is the sum across every job running at once.

Two jobs whose expensive months coincide can create a peak neither shows on its own. If you are deciding when to start the next job, checking that overlap is worth more than almost any other planning you can do.