Use a small business cash flow projection template If you don't want to build a financial projection from scratch, consider using one of Microsoft's premade templates.

Ideally, a cash-flow projection spells out your beginning cash balance. It breaks out the revenue (cash in) you anticipate from your profit centers on a weekly and/or monthly basis.

Microsoft offers a plethora of Excel shortcuts and templates for monthly budgeting to get you excited about spreadsheets.

For cash-flow projection tools to function properly and provide the most accurate forecasts, your software needs to be accurate with sales, expenses data and the proper dates for all transactions.

And once you start the process, you have the template to continue as necessary. I like to have both a monthly budget and cash flow reports to which I can compare actual monthly results.

For cash flow projections, you’ll predict the cash money that will flow into and out of your business in a particular month. You’ll need a year’s worth of monthly projections.

For cash-flow projection tools to function properly and provide the most accurate forecasts, your software needs to be accurate with sales, expenses data and the proper dates for all transactions.