How to Create a Monthly Cash Flow Template in Excel?

Whether you are a business owner, financial analyst, or just someone who wants to control your finances, you need to know your cash flow.

Why?

The key to growing your business is cash flow. You can only pay your expenses, invest strategically in your company, or look for outside finance if you have it.

You may correctly and purposefully carry out these tasks by keeping track of where cash is coming from and using a cash flow statement. But because creating cash flow statements can take a toll on you, an excellent tool to use is a cash flow template.

A monthly cash flow template allows you to track your income and expenses over time. This information is essential for making informed financial decisions and saving money.

So, are you looking for a monthly cash flow template in Excel? If so, you’re in the right place! We’ve created a helpful guide that effectively visualizes cash flow. Keep reading to learn more about monthly cash flow templates in Excel and how to use them effectively!

Table of Contents:

1. What is a Cash Flow Template?
2. Why Do You Need a Monthly Cash Flow Template?
3. Cash Flow Template for Small Business
4. How to Create a Monthly Cash Flow Template in Excel?
5. Video Tutorial: How to Create a Cash Flow Template in Excel?
6. Wrap Up

What is a Cash Flow Template?

A cash flow template is a way to visualize your cash flow. You can create a cash flow template in Excel or any other spreadsheet platform. You can also use a cash flow template online or in a dedicated app.

In other words, a cash flow template, often used in a 3-statement financial model, lets you track your inflows and outflows. It will show you how much money you have coming in each month and how much money you’re spending. You can then use this information to make better financial decisions.

Why Do You Need a Monthly Cash Flow Template?

The main reason why you need a cash flow template is to track your cash flow effectively. This will help you see what kind of financial picture you are currently in.

You’ll be able to see exactly where your money is going and your overall financial situation. A monthly cash flow template can help you visualize these things. It can show you exactly how much money you’re bringing in and how much money you’re spending.

You can also use it to get an idea of where you stand financially. With a cash flow template, you can see where your money is coming from and where it’s going. You can then use this information to make better financial decisions. Also, you can use it to see where your money could be saved.

So, the cash flow statement is a crucial business document that will help you stay on top of your finances.

Although the actual performance of a firm may differ from the expected cash flow, having this document in place is still crucial for operating your company. You’ll receive several advantages by developing and maintaining a cash forecast, especially when using an income statement template in Excel to track your financial performance.

So generally, a cash flow template:

• It’s perfect for organizing your organization’s operations and resources
• It makes sure that financial activities are coordinated properly
• It helps you run your company’s finances more effectively
• It enables you to understand better how your firm is performing financially
• Supports you in making wise, practical decisions

Cash Flow Template for Small Business

Let’s say you own a small business and want to track your cash flow effectively. If you use a cash flow template, you can see how much money you’re bringing in and how much you’re spending. You can also see how much money you can make or lose in a month.

This can help you make better financial decisions. You can see how much you spend on things like supplies and payroll. You can then use this information to make changes. You can scale back on the amount you spend on supplies. Or you can decide to increase your payroll to hire more employees.

Here is a short list of things you can track with columns in your cash flow template:

• Inflows: money coming into your business or household
• Outflows: money going out of your business or home
• Assets: money you have saved
• Liabilities: money you owe

You can also add a column for your net worth. This will give you a clear picture of your finances over time. You can see exactly how much your net worth is growing or shrinking.

How to Create a Monthly Cash Flow Template in Excel?

Now that we’ve discussed a cash flow template and why we need one, let’s discuss how to create one. To create a cash flow template, you need a data visualization tool. It’s impossible to examine the complex data required to make a cash flow statement without a data visualization tool.

However, the usage of data visualization is broad. There are various applications for each style of data visualization. While many tools are at your disposal to assist you in creating your charts, the majority of them give you only some of the insights you desire from your data.

In this situation, you can construct all the charts in a single dashboard using the ChartExpo add-on. Sankey Diagrams cannot be drawn using such products’ built-in templates, hence creating one in Excel is a complicated operation.

But with the ChartExpo add-in for Excel, creating a Sankey Diagram is a straightforward procedure. It only takes a few clicks to generate a basic Sankey Diagram.

How to Install ChartExpo in Excel?

1. Open your Excel application.
2. Open the worksheet and click on the “Insert” menu.
3. You’ll see the “My Apps”.
4. In the office Add-ins window, click on “Store” and search for ChartExpo on my Apps Store.
5. Click on the “Add” button to install ChartExpo in your Excel.

ChartExpo charts are available both in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Please use the following CTA’s to install the tool of your choice and create beautiful visualizations in a few clicks in your favorite tool.

Example

Sankey diagrams are useful for visualizing the flow of money between different levels. They can help identify areas for improvement or inefficiencies and can be easily understood by a wide audience.

Here we will track company’s monthly cash flow using Sankey Visualization. Let’s say the following data is your company’s cash flow for one month:

Locations	Revenue	Profit & Cost	Details	Amount
North America	Revenue	Expenses	Cost of Sales	132000
North America	Revenue	Expenses	Salaries	159000
North America	Revenue	Expenses	Cost of Marketing	170000
North America	Revenue	Profit	Tax	182000
North America	Revenue	Profit	Profit After Tax	834000
International	Revenue	Expenses	Cost of Sales	162000
International	Revenue	Expenses	Salaries	158000
International	Revenue	Expenses	Cost of Marketing	145000
International	Revenue	Profit	Tax	171000
International	Revenue	Profit	Profit After Tax	753000
Middle East	Revenue	Expenses	Cost of Sales	155000
Middle East	Revenue	Expenses	Salaries	166000
Middle East	Revenue	Expenses	Cost of Marketing	199000
Middle East	Revenue	Profit	Tax	151000
Middle East	Revenue	Profit	Profit After Tax	685000

• To get started with ChartExpo, install ChartExpo in Excel.
• Now Click on My Apps from the INSERT menu.

• Choose ChartExpo from My Apps, then click Insert.

• Once ChartExpo is loaded. Click on Sankey Chart from the list of charts.

• Click the “Create Chart From Selection” button after selecting the data from the sheet, as shown.

• The Sankey Chart will look as follows.

• If you want to have the title of chart, click on Edit Chart, as shown in the above image.
• To change the title of the chart, click on the pencil icon that is available very next to Chart Header.
• It will open the properties dialog. Under the Text section, you can add a heading in Line 1 and enable the Show Give the appropriate title of your chart and click on Apply button.

• Lets add the Prefix (e.g. $ Sign) with the numeric values in the chart.
• Click on highlighted pencil icon. Expand the “Symbols” properties to add the Prefix value (e.g. $ sign).

• To change the node color, click on the pencil icon available with the node. Expand the Node properties and change color from the Node Color property. Click on the Apply button.
• For saving changes click on Save Changes. This will persist the changes.

• Final chart will look as follows.

Insights

• At Level 1 (Locations) North America is a major contributor in revenue, which is $1.48M and it is around 35%. Middle East contributed the least in revenue, which is $1.36M and it becomes 32%.
• At level 2 (Revenue) total revenue of the company is $4.22M.
• At Level 3 (Profit & Cost) from $4.22M, $1.45M were the expenses and $2.78M was the profit of the company.
• At Level 4 (Details) out of $2.78M profit, Taxes, and profits were $504K, & $2.27M respectively.
• Expenses were divided into three node cost of sales, salaries, and cost of marketing. The cost of sales was $449K, salaries were $483K and cost of marketing was $514K.

Video Tutorial: How to Create a Cash Flow Template in Excel?

In this video tutorial, you’ll learn how to create and analyze Cash Flow templates in Excel.

FAQs:

Does Excel have a Cash Flow Template?

Yes, Excel has a cash flow template when installing the ChartExpo add-in. ChartExpo provides Sankey visualization. This chart provides a sample data template, but you may change it with your data and create the visualization for your data.

Which Cash Flow Visualization Will You Pick?

Sankey Diagrams are a fantastic tool for illustrating multi-flows, including cash flow. This can assist people in finding possibilities to boost income or cut costs to improve cash flow.

Wrap Up

A handy, monthly cash flow template is a great way to track money as it comes and goes. It helps you develop better financial habits by watching your income and outgoings line up clearly every month. But what should it look like? How can you make the best use of it?

If you have to track your cash flow from month to month and need help tracking this critical metric, the information above will help. Everything you need to make rapid, informed decisions based on reliable, understandable data is available with ChartExpo explained above.

Organizations can benefit from effective data visualization by making the connections between KPIs. Before the data is visualized, the relationship between one KPI and another is not immediately clear. When that happens, a Sankey Diagram will help you find the opportunities in your data.

Sankey Diagrams are an excellent method for displaying facts. Because of the data complexity, it is essential to consider the user’s knowledge and expertise in data visualization. Also, how easily the Sankey Diagram can help visualize the data.