By Carl from Gro
3 min de lecture
En bref
Forecast what you will bill each month, job by job, instead of finding out at month-end. Then compare your forecast with what you actually billed and look at the gaps. This method starts from planned billing, not from how long each client takes to pay or from holdbacks.
Why forecast before you bill?
When you bill progressively, especially on large contracts, the number that matters is the one for the months ahead. At Gro, we think you should forecast this billing to manage cash flow.
This projection tells you how many progress billings to send on each job, then lets you check that they were billed.
How do you build the forecast, job by job?
List the jobs where you bill progressively.
For each job, write down what you plan to bill in each coming month.
Add up the jobs, month by month, to see what is coming.
Then compare each forecast with what you actually billed.
This method starts from planned billing, not from how long each client takes to pay or from holdbacks.
What do you do when actual billing differs from the forecast?
A forecast helps you make sure you bill what you planned. Say you planned to bill $17,000 CAD on a job in November, and you ended up billing $15,000 CAD. That gap deserves a check: why is the invoice lower than planned?
Which tool can track your jobs?
Studio Finances helps construction companies set up integrated and flexible systems. Agence Gro also offers a Monday cash flow management module. It connects to QuickBooks or Sage and tracks payables, receivables and cash flow forecasts, job by job.
It has columns for the job, the client, the type and the status. It also includes payment forecasts and an estimate of upcoming collections by project or client. A calendar view shows what is coming in and when.
How do you go from planned billing to cash, with assumptions?
Next, add assumptions about the money you collect and the money you pay out. That goes beyond a billing forecast. What happens if you collect 80% of your receivables, or 85%? What happens if you delay non-critical bills by two weeks?
At a webinar on October 15, 2026, we showed a prototype cash management tool. It simulates these scenarios and flags the gap between planned and actual billing. That day, it had no real data connected.
Questions fréquentes
Can my accounting software feed the forecast?
The cash flow management module syncs with QuickBooks or Sage. It also builds an automatic list of invoices to collect, by day, week or month.
Can I see collections by client instead of by job?
Yes. The module estimates upcoming collections by project or by client.
