Learn how to use the cash flow planner in QuickBooks Online to forecast your income and expenses.
Through the cash flow planner, you can forecast money in and out of your business. This way, you can keep track of your cash flow. You can also add and adjust future items to see how certain changes affect your cash flow. Here’s how to set up the planner and create, edit, or delete items.
Changing items won’t affect your books. This helps you make informed decisions about when to save, spend, borrow, and transfer money. Here’s how to set up the planner, and create, edit, or delete items.
Note: The cash flow planner isn’t available in QuickBooks Online Accountant and if you turned on Multicurrency.
Step 1: Set up your account
To set up your planner, connect your bank and credit card accounts. This way, you can use the data from your accounts in all QuickBooks.
Step 2: Add a new item
You can manually add items for potential income and expenses. You can also create repeating items to make planning even easier. Here’s how.
Important: Remember, items aren't actual transactions. QuickBooks won't add them to your books.
- Go to Dashboards and select Planner (Take me there).
- Select Add item.
- Select Money in if the item is income, or Money out if it's an expense.
- Give the item a name and enter an amount.
Note: If it’s a recurring item, select the Repeating button. Then select how often the item repeats. - When you're done, select Save.
If you want to export your cash flow details, from the Download Report dropdown ▼, select Export as CSV or Export as PDF.
Edit or delete an item
You can easily edit or delete items to see how that changes your cash flow display. To edit or delete items:
Note: Changing items won’t affect your books. This helps you make informed decisions about when to save, spend, borrow, and transfer money.
Edit an item
- Go to Dashboards and select Planner (Take me there).
- Select the item you want to edit.
- Change the date, name, amount field, money in or out, or the repeat details.
- Select Update to save your changes.
Delete an item
- Go to Dashboards and select Planner (Take me there).
- Select the item you want to delete.
- To delete a non-repeating item, select Remove, then Remove to confirm.
- To delete a repeating item, select Remove, then
- Select Only item to delete that single item in the series
- Select Entire series, then Confirm to delete all repeating items
Forecast your cash flow
The planner gets info from a few places:
- Your connected savings, transaction, and credit card accounts
- Transactions you've entered into QuickBooks with a due date in the future
- Items you add manually to the planner
To get the latest forecast:
- Go to Dashboards and select Planner (Take me there).
- Select the dates filters shown below Today's cash balance to set the forecast range.
- Select the All, Money in, and Money out tabs to filter the list.
- Drag the bar across the chart to a specific date. This shows you a list of items that may impact your cash flow.
Items all have different labels:
- Predicted: Money in and money out items QuickBooks Online predicts based on your financial history. These are marked with a special icon.
- Invoice, sales receipt, bill, expense, cheque: Transactions you've entered into QuickBooks.
- Planned: Money in and money out items you manually add to the planner, which aren't included in your regular accounting.
Fine-tune forecasts
| Important: The Cash Flow planner is a planning tool. Adjustments you make in the planner won't affect your accounting in QuickBooks. They won't impact your chart of accounts or online banking transactions. |
You can edit the expected amount and date of future items to see how specific changes may impact your cash flow. To adjust an item, select it from the list, make your change, then select Update.
QuickBooks Online doesn't include overdue invoices and bills in forecasts since they're incomplete. If you want to include them:
- Go to the top of the Cash flow planner list.
- Select Update to open a list of your overdue bills and invoices.
- Select a new expected date and select Update for each transaction you want to add.
- When you're ready, select Done.