Budgets and cashflow forecasts you can plan against.
Annual budgets, rolling cash flow forecasts and scenario modelling, maintained against actuals rather than built once and filed. Cash pressure is almost always visible months before it is felt — if someone is looking.
experience
worked across
in one team
What our budgeting and cashflow services cover.
A budget sets the expectation. A cash flow forecast tells you whether you can fund it. Both have to be maintained against what actually happened to be worth anything.
Annual budget preparation
Built from your revenue drivers and cost base, not last year plus a percentage, with assumptions written down.
Rolling cash flow forecast
Rolled forward each period on actual timing — when debtors pay, when payroll, super and tax fall.
Short-term cash view
Cash in and out at a weekly level — the horizon that matters when funding decisions are close.
Scenario and sensitivity modelling
What a lost contract, delayed receipt or new hire does to cash, modelled before the decision.
Working capital analysis
Debtor days, creditor days and stock examined together, because that is where cash gets tied up.
Budget versus actual
Variances reported with what drove them, and whether the budget or the assumption needs to change.
Capital expenditure planning
Planned purchases and commitments brought into the forecast, so their cash cost is visible in advance.
Information for lenders and funders
Forecasts and schedules prepared in a form your bank or financier can work with.
Budgeting and forecasting work best alongside reliable monthly reporting — a forecast built on records that have not been reconciled is guesswork with decimal places. [ASSUMPTION — confirm with HSC Edge: whether covenant compliance reporting and direct liaison with lenders are offered, and whether forecasting is provided as a standalone engagement or only alongside bookkeeping or reporting work.]
Businesses rarely fail because of profit. They fail because of timing.
A profitable business can run out of cash, and usually the warning was in the numbers well before anyone acted on it — a lengthening debtor ledger, a tax instalment nobody provisioned for, growth funded entirely out of working capital.
The point of a maintained forecast is not accuracy to the dollar. It is seeing the pinch point far enough ahead that you still have choices: pull a payment forward, delay a commitment, arrange a facility while the bank is still comfortable rather than when you need it.
Book a consultationBudgeting and cash flow forecasting for businesses that have outgrown a spreadsheet.
Most businesses have a budget somewhere. The question is whether anyone compares it to reality.
Growth is consuming cash faster than it produces it
Winning more work is not the same as being able to fund it. We model what the growth costs in working capital before you commit to it, and show when the cash comes back.
Your cash position swings hard across the year
Where revenue arrives in lumps and costs do not, an averaged monthly view hides the months that matter. We forecast on actual timing so the trough is visible in advance.
Someone external expects numbers that hold up
Where a bank, financier or investor is involved, forecasts get scrutinised. We prepare them with the assumptions documented and the arithmetic able to survive a question.
Built once properly, then kept alive.
A model that is rebuilt from scratch every quarter never gets better. The value is in maintaining one and learning what your assumptions got wrong.
Understand the drivers
What actually moves your revenue and cost — jobs won, utilisation, headcount, volume, price — and the real timing of money in and out. A forecast driven by anything else is decoration.
Build the budget and the model
The annual budget and the cash flow forecast built together, with the assumptions documented so they can be argued with, and scenarios set up for the decisions you can see coming.
Maintain it against actuals
Each period the actuals go in, the forecast rolls forward, variances get explained, and anything that threatens cash or covenant headroom is raised while there is still room to respond.
A forecast is a judgement, not a spreadsheet.
Anyone can extend a column of numbers across twelve months. Deciding whether a debtor will actually pay in 45 days, whether a margin assumption is defensible, or whether a growth plan is fundable requires someone who has watched these assumptions fail in other businesses.
Our principals are Chartered Accountants with more than 20 years across commercial, government, not-for-profit and regulated environments. If we think your plan does not fund itself, we will tell you that plainly rather than modelling it politely.
Forecasting questions.
If yours isn't here, send it through and we will answer it directly.
Book a consultation01How far out can a cash flow forecast actually be trusted?
The next 13 weeks can usually be forecast tightly, because most of it is already committed. Beyond a quarter it becomes a planning tool rather than a prediction — useful for direction and for testing decisions, not for precision. We are explicit about which part of the forecast is which.
02We already have a budget. Do you need to start again?
Not necessarily. We will review what you have, test the assumptions behind it and tell you whether it is a sound base to build on or whether rebuilding it is faster than repairing it.
03Do you have to do our bookkeeping as well?
No, but the forecast is only as good as the actuals feeding it. Where the underlying records are not reconciled or the period is not closed, we will say what has to be fixed first rather than forecasting from numbers we do not trust.
04Can you model a specific decision for us?
Yes — a hire, a site, a piece of equipment, a price change or losing a major customer. The useful output is usually not a single number but the point at which the decision stops being affordable.
05What does this cost?
Our fees depend on the complexity of the model, the number of entities and how often the forecast is updated. Initial build is generally quoted separately from ongoing maintenance, which is provided for an agreed monthly or quarterly fee.
See the pinch point before it arrives.
Tell us what decisions are in front of you and how far ahead you can currently see. We will set out what the budget and forecast need to cover, and what has to be true of your records to build them.
We reply to every enquiry directly — no call centre, no sales script.