What is a Cashflow Forecast?
A cashflow forecast provides a clear view of future income and expenses so you can stay ahead of costs and avoid unexpected shortfalls. For builders, expenses often come before income. Materials, labour, and shifting timelines can disrupt expected payment flows. A clear forecast helps smooth out that uncertainty, giving you the insight to plan and maintain financial stability.
What Impacts Your Cashflow?
In each lead, you can enter an expected contract signing date and expected construction start date. The expected contract signing date is used to track when you anticipate converting the Lead into a Job. This will not impact your cashflow forecast. However, the expected construction start date plays an important role in cashflow forecasting.
Within Financials > Cashflow > Cash Forecast, you can toggle on Include weighted pipeline sales to view your future projects. Once enabled, JACK uses the expected construction start date, alongside the project budget, build duration, target markup, and pipeline conversion rate to forecast when revenue is likely to flow into your business.
💡Keeping these dates up to date helps ensure your cashflow forecast reflects the most accurate view of your future workload and expected income.
Cashflow Settings
Build Duration
The build duration determines how cash inflows and outflows are spread across each month of the project, directly shaping how your forecast is phased over time. Navigate to Settings > Data Setup > Project Types and click 
to adjust your build duration settings.
Sales Pipeline Setup
You can also edit the conversion rate for each sales pipeline by navigating to Settings > Sales Pipeline and click 
. This will calculate the profit to be included in the cashflow forecast for each lead status.
Target Markup
JACK uses this rate to calculate projected profit based on the project budget, ensuring your forecast reflects both revenue and margin expectations. To update your Target Markup, navigate to Settings > Cashflow Setup, enter your percentage under Target Markup, and click Save Changes.
Example: Lead > Cashflow Forecast
Let’s say you have a Lead with the following details:
Project Budget: $350,000 (including GST and margin)
Project Type: Single-storey (6-month build duration)
Target Markup: 33% (company default)
Expected Start Date: 25 September 2024
Conversion Rate: 90% (Lead is close to signing)
With a 33% markup (equivalent to a 25% builder’s margin), the $350,000 budget breaks down as:
Cost: $262,570 (incl. GST)
Profit: $87,430 (incl. GST)
Total Revenue (excl. GST): $318,182
Total Revenue (incl. GST): $350,000
Because the Lead has a 90% conversion rate, JACK applies a weighted value to the projected profit.
This means:
Weighted Profit: $78,687 (90% of $87,430)
Spread evenly across the 6-month build duration
Resulting in approximately $13,115 added to your forecast cash position each month from September through February
This gives you a realistic, probability-based view of how this project could impact your company cashflow before it’s formally signed.