Concept card

Cash Flow Forecasting

As of 2026-10-07

Edited by Cédric Mary, sole editor and publication director — 27 years in the SAP ecosystem. How these pages are produced, and where automation is used.

What is Cash Flow Forecasting?

The gap between billed-but-unpaid (60-90 day terms) and tax-due-now is where undercapitalised freelance practices fail — a 13-week rolling forecast is the fix.

What it is

Cash flow forecasting is the discipline of projecting, week by week, when money will arrive in a consulting practice's bank account and when it will leave — typically over a rolling 90-day, 13-week horizon. It sits at the intersection of accounting and operations: it is not a profit-and-loss statement, and it is not a tax return. It is a simple, mechanical answer to one question — on any given Monday over the next quarter, will there be enough cash in the account to cover what is due.

For a freelance SAP analytics consultant, the mechanics matter enormously because the cash cycle is asymmetric. Revenue is invoiced on delivery, but Tier-1 EMEA clients routinely pay on 60, 90, or even 120-day terms. Tax and social-charge obligations, by contrast, are due on a fixed calendar that has nothing to do with when engagements were billed. A consultant can be profitable on paper — engagement margins strong, pipeline full — and still miss a URSSAF payment or a corporate tax installment because the receivable that would have covered it has not landed yet. Cash flow forecasting exists to make that mismatch visible before it becomes a crisis rather than after.

Why it matters

French SASU tax obligations hit on 4-5 different, non-revenue-aligned bills a year (CFE/CVAE/IS, URSSAF, VAT) — opaque timing is the top reason solo consultants under-forecast.
Consultants who under-draw owner pay to 'save cash' often still miss the actual tax-bill timing — the discipline is forecasting, not just saving.
The action threshold is explicit: any weekly running balance below 1x monthly operating burn requires immediate action.

Key points

Rolling 90-day (13-week) forecast: receivables · payables · tax · owner draw · net · running balance.
Tier-1 EMEA payment terms: 60-90 days standard; some 120.
French SASU: 5-12 tax bills/year (URSSAF + IS + VAT + CFE/CVAE).
Update Monday morning 5 min; quarterly accountant deep-review 1h.
Buffer minimum: 1× monthly operating burn; below = action triggers.
Owner draw matches forecast, not revenue.
Portage salarial = simpler cash flow, ~10% margin cost.
Cash flow (C069) = 90-day micro; runway (C070) = 6-12 month macro. Both needed.

Terms used on this page

Cash flow forecast: 13-week rolling projection of money-in vs money-out, weekly granularity.
Receivables: Money expected to arrive (invoiced engagements at their due dates).
Payables: Money expected to leave for operational costs (software, insurance, accounting).
Tax bills (FR SASU): 5-12 per year: URSSAF + IS trimestrial + VAT + CFE/CVAE annual.
Owner draw: Salary or dividends taken from the consultant's corporate vehicle. Match to forecast not revenue.
Running cash balance: Week-end cash position after applying all flows; the diagnostic signal.
Operating burn: Average monthly outflow excluding owner draw. Used to set buffer threshold.
Action threshold: Running balance below 1× monthly burn triggers action (delay draw, accelerate invoicing, draw credit).

Sources

Full card available to members. What the full card adds: the full decision framework · the SAP vs Snowflake / Databricks / Fabric comparison · the common pitfalls and their fix · the cheat sheet · the architecture schemas · the code blocks · the facts worth quoting.

Open in the app →