Put Your Sales Pipeline into a Cash Forecast

Forecast the receipt, not the sales conversation

For Friday's bills, you need to know which customer payments will have cleared. Even a signed quote leaves some dates to check. Delivery, acceptance, invoicing and customer payment can fall in different weeks.

Use your cash forecast for timing and a separate job register for the evidence behind each receipt. Business Victoria's forecasting guidance emphasises the timing of inflows and outflows. The worksheet below applies that principle to a service pipeline.

Give each job one place in the records

1. Enquiry or quoteRecord the opportunity, next decision and evidence; keep unaccepted work out of committed receipts.
2. Accepted workMap the agreed scope, delivery milestone and likely collection date. Include the costs of fulfilling it.
3. Issued invoiceReplace the matching pipeline receipt with the outstanding invoice balance.
4. Cleared paymentRemove it from future receipts and reconcile it to the bank.

Assumptions: AUD. Amounts are total expected bank receipts, including any applicable GST. Dates are fictional planning weeks; accepted work is still subject to delivery and collection risk.

Job	Evidence / stage	Delivery or acceptance	Expected receipt	Forecast treatment
A: $4,000	Invoice issued	Complete	Week 1	Receivables: $4,000
B: $6,000	Quote accepted	Week 2	Week 4	Booked work: $6,000
C: $8,000	Quote sent, no acceptance	Unconfirmed	Week 6 if won	Scenario only
D: $3,000	Enquiry	Unknown	Unknown	No dated receipt yet

Original ASBG worked example. All businesses, amounts and scenarios are fictional. The table contains the same figures as the visual.

Job B becomes invoice B-104 after delivery. Remove the $6,000 booked-work entry when importing B-104. Both records can remain in the audit trail, but only one belongs in the cash total.

Make uncertainty visible without inventing certainty

If past quote conversion supports a probability estimate, a weighted pipeline can help with longer-range planning. But a 50% chance of an $8,000 job is not a $4,000 payment. You may receive $8,000, nothing, or a different staged amount. Test those whole outcomes when deciding whether a particular bill can be paid.

Create a cautious case with existing invoices and credible booked receipts, then an additional-work case. Label assumptions about conversion and timing separately. Review overdue invoices too: being invoiced doesn't make a receipt certain.

Include the costs of winning the work

An extra $8,000 receipt may require materials, subcontractors or travel weeks earlier. Add those payments to the same scenario. Otherwise the “more sales” case can hide a larger funding gap. The large-contract cash test shows how to do this.

For deposits and milestones, use separate rows linked to one job identifier. Once a deposit is paid, subtract it from the amount still to be collected. Don't forecast the full contract price again at completion.

Review the handover every week

Ask the person selling the work about acceptance, the person doing it about delivery, and whoever invoices about the customer's payment process. Update only the assumptions that changed, with a date and source. Use the forecast-versus-actual log to learn whether your receipt dates are realistic.

Key takeaways

• Separate opportunities, accepted work, invoices and cleared cash.
• Replace entries as a job changes stage; don't add the same sale twice.
• Forecast delivery costs alongside any additional sales receipts.

Where to get help

Your bookkeeper can help join invoice balances to job references. Check contractual milestone and acceptance wording with an appropriate adviser if it determines when you can request payment.