A chashflow plan is a type of financial roadmap that outlines the income and expenses for your company. It serves as a guide, helping understand the current financial situation as well as make adequate plans for the future. Its basic premise is evaluating and planning financial resources, setting goals, and then tracking the progress towards reaching those goals. Depending on the complexity of the financial situation a cashflow plan can include investment strategies, budgeting measures, and projections for the future. The plan is tailored to the circumstances and particularities of your financial situation so that you can plan for the future and make correct decisions. To make the most of your cashflow plan, you should review it regularly, making changes and adjusting future projections when needed.

What is in a cashflow plan?

Creating a cashflow plan is focused on improving finance management, better preparation for future expenses and identification of potential areas of improvement. It’s typically focused on the following areas:

Basic income and expenses: a list of all the sources of income as well as expenses, including taxes, investments, and loans.
Budget: outline of all the spending, a plan for future expenses etc.
Investment strategies: strategies to help you invest your profits and maximize the returns on your investments.
Goals: the financial aims the plan is supposed to help accomplish
Financial projections: a forecast for the financial situation down the line

How to set up a cashflow plan?

Setting up your cashflow plan is all about being accurate and staying accurate by revisiting it regularly. It will definitely take some effort, but it will pay off later and it will tremendously help keep a hand on the financial pulse in the meanwhile.

Set realistic goals: make sure you’re not aiming for the moon. Consider your situation and perspectives carefully and set up goals you actually expect to achieve. It's always better to overachieve and be pleasantly surprised than to underachieve and be sorely disappointed.
Review: The financial situation can change quite often depending on your circumstances and the market situation. Be sure to update your plan accordingly so that it is always up to date.
Find savings: Reducing expenses is always easier than finding new sources of income. Remember that everything adds over time and even small savings can add up to quite a lot over the year.
Revisit: Track your progress over time and make budgeting a habit.
Automate the process: Use professional tools to save time, get detailed data analysis and keep everything in one place. If you want to hire a professional to help you with finances it will be a lot easier for them to use a simple program than dig through tons of spreadsheets or even worse papers.

Believe it or not the vast majority of companies still handle finances using spreadsheets where it not only requires a ton of work and maintenance, but more importantly does not show you the actual data in any shape or form. This forces you to run the numbers yourself, and can potentially mean missing some crucial information or making incorrect conclusions. Modern programs and applications will do a lot of the work for you and will provide you with both analytics and projections for the future, all while keeping your data secure and accessible from work or from home, whenever you need. With the right help creating a great cashflow plan requires only a few clicks letting you take full control of your finances without even being at the office.