Project Cash Flow Template

What is a Project Cash Flow Template?

A project cash flow template is a structured format that maps out all expected income and expenses over the duration of a construction project. It highlights when funding is received, when payments fall due, and how cash balances evolve.

A project cash flow template enables owners and managers to forecast financial peaks and troughs. It also ensures cash availability aligns with project delivery, reducing the risk of shortfalls or delayed payments.

What’s Included in a Construction Project Cash Flow Template?

A construction cash flow template provides a complete view of how funding and expenses are scheduled across the project life cycle. By mapping every inflow and outflow against time, it shows whether cash reserves are sufficient to support delivery without delays.

Key inclusions in a project cash flow template are:

• Funding inflows: Income from lenders, staged client payments, or government grants tied to milestones.
• Contractor and subcontractor payments: Progress payments, retention releases, and change order settlements that must be planned to maintain cash availability.
• Consultant and professional fees: Scheduled payments for design, engineering, and project management services.
• Procurement and material costs: Staged payments for long-lead items, equipment, and site works.
• Time-phased forecast: A monthly or quarterly breakdown of expected inflows and outflows across the project timeline.
• Cumulative cash balance: A running total that highlights liquidity pressure points and ensures funding covers obligations.
• Contingency allocations: Reserved amounts set aside to manage unforeseen costs or scope changes.

With all of these components in one place, a project cash flow template becomes a practical tool for forecasting construction financial health and ensuring funding is always aligned with delivery.

Why Use a Template for Project Cash Flow

A template for project cash flow makes it easier to forecast and monitor how money moves through a construction project. By consolidating inflows, outflows, and balances into one schedule, it removes the guesswork of manual spreadsheets and gives stakeholders a consistent view of liquidity.

By using a template for project cash flow, project teams can:

• Standardize reporting: Apply a consistent format for forecasting cash inflows and outflows across all projects.
• Highlight funding gaps early: Spot when obligations exceed available funds before it impacts delivery.
• Link payments to schedules: Align contractor payments and funding milestones in one structured framework.
• Compare projects easily: Use the same template to benchmark cash flow across multiple projects or programs.

A project cash flow template provides a consistent structure for project management forecasting, ensuring that every update follows the same format. This makes it easier to compare across projects and maintain reliable reporting.

Who Should Use a Construction Project Cash Flow Template

A template for project cash flow is for construction professionals who need to plan, track, and report how money moves through a project. Using a template for project cash flow helps each role manage funding, payments, and financial stability.

✅ Project Owners: Ensure that staged funding or investor contributions match the timing of payments, protecting project viability and maintaining stakeholder confidence.

✅ Project Managers and Client-Side Project Managers: Gain real-time visibility into cash positions to align budgets, contracts, and schedules, reducing the risk of payment delays disrupting delivery.

✅ Quantity Surveyors and Cost Managers: Forecast contractor payments, change orders, and retention releases with precision, improving accuracy in both project and portfolio reporting.

✅ Commercial and Procurement Teams: Track procurement schedules, supplier payments, and contract commitments in one structure, making financial obligations easier to manage.

✅ Finance and Treasury Teams: Oversee drawdowns from lenders, manage working capital across projects, and ensure compliance with financial reporting requirements.

✅ Program Managers and Portfolio Managers: Compare cash flow performance across multiple projects using a consistent template to support investment decisions and resource allocation.

💡 Pro Tip: Using a standard cash flow template across roles and projects improves collaboration, speeds up reporting cycles, and ensures every stakeholder works from the same financial outlook.

How to Create a Project Cash Flow in Mastt

To create a project cash flow in Mastt, project teams start in the Cost Module, where cash flow reporting is built directly from budgets, contracts, and payments. The setup takes minutes, and once created, the cash flow updates automatically as new payments, change orders, or funding entries are added.

Build your cash flow in Mastt to easily:

📊 See inflows and outflows in one view, including funding sources, contractor payments, consultant fees, procurement costs, and cumulative balances.

🧠 Understand every figure instantly with clear charts, tables, and legends that show cash positions over time.

✏️ Add budgets, contracts, forecasts, or payments instantly with the + Add button to keep your cash flow complete and accurate.

🎯 Customise your view by toggling charts and tables, adjusting date ranges, filtering columns, and applying cumulative overlays.

📥 Export and share your current view or full dataset, and generate professional cash flow reports directly from Mastt.

Everything updates in real time, so your project cash flow is always accurate, connected, and ready to support financial decisions.

Here’s how to use Mastt’s Cost Module to generate a project cash flow:

1. Set up your Budget and Forecasts: Add your total project budget with + Add → Budget, including any approved adjustments or forecasts. This forms the baseline for your cash flow.
2. Access Cash Flow: From your project dashboard, open the Cost Module and select Cash Flow.
3. Add Contracts and Payment Schedules: Create contracts via + Add → Contract and link them to budget lines. Enter payment schedules, payments, and change orders to show when outflows will occur.
4. Record Funding Inflows: Log client payments, lender disbursements, or staged funding entries so the template reflects both sides of the cash flow.
5. Track Cash Flow Periods: Use Mastt’s timeline and period controls to review cash flow by month, quarter, or fiscal year. Close off periods once payments are finalised to lock reporting integrity.
6. Customise Your View: Use the settings menu to sort, filter, pin, or hide columns. Adjust chart displays, legends, and cumulative overlays to highlight the information most relevant to your stakeholders.
7. Export and Share Reports: Export filtered views or the complete dataset, and create PDF cash flow reports directly from Mastt to distribute accurate updates.

💡 Pro Tip: Creating your project cash flow in Mastt keeps everything connected. Every contract update, change order, or payment instantly flows into the cash flow view, so you always have an accurate forecast without rework.

Common Problems with Manual Project Cash Flow Management

Managing cash flow on Excel, static spreadsheets, or exported PDFs often leaves project teams with outdated and unreliable forecasts. Even when an xls cash flow template is available as a free download, it still requires constant manual updates and offers little visibility into real-time project performance.

❌ Duplication of effort: Updating spreadsheets for every new contract, change order, or forecast means rework and wasted time.

❌ Complex formulas: Excel formulas are often inconsistent or break easily, creating errors and making cash flow data hard to trust.

❌ Delayed actuals: Reconciling what has been paid against the forecast requires manual spreadsheet adjustments and is rarely up to date.

❌ Inaccurate projections: Disconnected spreadsheets don’t reflect live contract or payment data, leading to unreliable forecasts and missed funding gaps.

❌ Difficult comparisons: Comparing actual vs forecast vs baseline across multiple PDFs or Excel files takes hours of manual work.

❌ Charting issues: Preparing charts by fiscal year, calendar year, cumulative or non-cumulative views involves heavy formatting in spreadsheets, often slowing down reporting.

💡 Pro Tip: Replace manual Excel cash flow tracking with Mastt’s connected system. Every budget, contract, and payment feeds directly into the cash flow, so your forecasts are accurate, up to date, and ready for reporting in seconds.

Secure Your Project’s Cash Flow with Mastt

Excel and PDFs can’t keep pace with the financial demands of construction projects. Mastt connects every budget, contract, and payment into a live cash flow view, so forecasts are always accurate and decisions are made with confidence.

👉 Build your project cash flow template in Mastt today and take full control of funding, payments, and financial performance.