Most owners find it hard to type a realistic figure for a whole year onto a page, especially if they have never budgeted before. A quarter is a much smaller, more realistic step, and every quarter your accounting software already produces actual figures for the BAS. Quarterly Forecast & Review brings the two together: the plan for each quarter, the actual result once the quarter is over, and the difference between them.
Seen quarter after quarter, those differences become trends: revenue drifting below plan, money owed to you creeping up, closing cash a little further behind each time. Trends are the earliest reliable warning of where cash is heading, and they are what this page is built to show. The annual forecast (Chapter 7) is then built on what the quarters actually show, not on hope.
There are three ways in:
- the dark Quarterly Forecast & Review button, first in the Reports & Other Functions row on your business page;
- the same button on the Forecast page;
- the Quarterly Forecast & Review entry in the Menu.
The page opens on the current financial year (July to June). The year buttons under the heading switch to any other year, and the Business drop-down switches to another business you have access to, for the same year.
From top to bottom:
- The blue header: the business and year, the Business drop-down and year buttons, and four buttons at the top right: Save, Print / PDF, Download Excel and Save as web page.
- Three steps: Plan, Compare, Watch the trend.
- Four trend cards, once at least one quarter has actual figures.
- The quarterly table: four quarters, each with Forecast, Actual and Diff columns, then the year: the four quarters added up, beside the annual sheet’s figure.
- Your goal, and a short How to read this page guide.
Each quarter’s Forecast starts at the annual sheet’s figure divided by four. Change any figure to suit the season (a retailer’s December quarter, a landscaper’s quiet winter), then click Save. Start again from the annual forecast (÷ 4) resets every quarter of the year, after asking you to confirm.
The lines are deliberately simpler than the annual sheet, enough to see what is driving cash without the detail:
| Line | What it means | Taken from the annual sheet |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / Sales | Total sales for the quarter, excluding GST. | Revenue / Sales |
| Cost of sales and fuel | Direct costs of what was sold, plus fuel. | Cost of Goods Sold + Fuel |
| Wages and super | Wages and payroll, plus superannuation. | Wages and Payroll + Superannuation |
| Rent and overheads | Rent, insurance, professional fees and other overheads. | Rent + Insurance + Professional Fees + Other Overheads |
| Loan repayments and interest | Principal repaid on loans, plus interest. | Debt Repayment + Interest Expense |
| Tax and BAS paid | Tax paid during the year (last year’s assessed tax, shown as ATO Obligations). | ATO Obligations |
| Owner drawings | What you take out of the business. | Owner Drawings |
| Equipment, stock and other movements | Everything the lines above don’t cover: equipment bought, stock, money owed to and by you, new loans and reserve funding. Worked out automatically so the four quarters add up to the annual sheet’s year-end cash. A negative figure here means more cash came in this way than went out, for example from a new loan. | Balancing figure |
Below the cash lines, Net cash movement is cash in less cash out for the quarter, and Closing cash carries it forward quarter to quarter from the year’s opening cash. The Balances at quarter end (money owed to you, money you owe, and GST and ATO owed) start at the annual sheet’s year-end figures and can be adjusted for each quarter.
Once a quarter has ended and the BAS is prepared, bring in the actual figures:
- In the accounting software (Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, Sage or Reckon), export the quarter’s BAS summary or profit and loss report as an Excel (.xlsx) or CSV file.
- In BusinessSolvency, open Import Quarterly Data (the import the actual figures link in step 2 on the page, or the Import button below the table).
- Choose the financial year and the quarter (Q1 July–September, Q2 October–December, Q3 January–March, Q4 April–June), choose the file, and click Upload and Import.
The import reads the file’s row labels and picks out: the cash or bank balance (labels such as “Cash at bank”), total income (“Total income”, “Total revenue”, “Sales”), money owed to you (“Trade debtors”, “Accounts receivable”), money you owe (“Trade creditors”, “Accounts payable”), short-term loans, and GST and ATO owed.
Back on Quarterly Forecast & Review, those figures appear in the quarter’s Actual column, and Diff shows Actual minus Forecast: green where you are ahead, red where behind. A balance the file didn’t contain shows “—” rather than a false $0. The cost lines show “—” for now; reading costs from the same file is the next step being built (Section 7A.12).
Practise it
Bookkeepers: practise importing a quarter and checking it on a training copy before you do it for a client. Training: who training is for →
Once any quarter of the year has actual figures, four cards appear above the table, for the latest such quarter:
- Revenue: actual against forecast, with an up or down arrow, in dollars and percent.
- Closing cash: the actual bank balance at quarter end against the forecast, and how far ahead or behind.
- Money owed to you: the actual debtors, and whether they are above forecast (“collections slipping”).
- Cash IN ≥ Cash OUT: whether the quarter’s actual cash movement was positive.
Read across the year, quarter by quarter, the same four measures become the trend: which way each is moving, and by how much.
Cash IN ≥ Cash OUT is the Sustainable Cashflow test (Chapter 3) for each quarter. On the forecast, it is ✓ when the quarter’s net cash movement is zero or better. Once the quarter is imported, the actual check compares the quarter’s closing cash with the previous quarter’s.
Your goal checks whether the quarter can sustainably pay you a quarter of the yearly goal. What the quarter can pay is what is already being taken out (drawings) plus whatever cash the quarter has left over (its net cash movement). For example, with a goal of $25,000 a year, the quarter needs to provide $6,250. If the forecast takes out nothing for you and the quarter’s net cash movement is −$4,000 (the bank balance falls by $4,000), the quarter can pay −$4,000, so it is $6,250 + $4,000 = $10,250 short: the quarter would need to be that much better to fund the goal. As the forecast improves, the shortfall shrinks, and once a quarter covers its share it turns to ✓.
Quarterly Forecast & Review works hand in hand with the annual sheet (the three statements on your business page, and the Forecast page for future years):
- It starts from the annual sheet. Each quarter’s forecast begins at the annual figure divided by four, and the year’s opening cash is the previous year’s closing cash.
- It compares with the annual sheet. The Year columns show the four quarters added up beside the annual sheet’s figure, so any difference between the quarterly plan and the annual one is visible at a glance.
- It reconciles to the annual sheet. The Equipment, stock and other movements line makes the four quarters’ closing cash end at the annual sheet’s year-end cash.
- It informs the annual sheet. When the quarters show the plan was too hopeful (or too cautious), update the annual figures on your business page or the Forecast page to match what the quarters show. A button to send the quarters’ totals straight to the annual sheet is being built (Section 7A.12).
The process is the one this platform is built around: quarter, then year, then three years, each built on the one before.
At the end of the year, importing the April–June quarter is step 6 of the July Year-End Checklist (Chapter 7, Section 7.12).
Under the table, Your goal asks the question behind every forecast: what do you want the business to pay you each year? Enter the amount, and what it is for (family, school fees, retirement), and click Save my goal. Each quarter in the table is then checked against a quarter of it (Section 7A.7). To remove a goal, clear both boxes and save. With no goal saved, the check uses current drawings as the goal; with no drawings either, it shows “no goal set”.
“Sustainably” means after all the bills, tax, loan repayments and the other movements, without having to put money back in. A goal that is short in the early quarters is not a failure: it is the clearest possible signal of how much better the quarters need to be, and where.
- Save (green, top right, or below the table) saves the quarterly forecast.
- Print / PDF prints the trend cards and table on A4 landscape. Choose “Save as PDF” in the print window for a PDF.
- Download Excel downloads a formatted workbook: every line, Forecast, Actual and Diff for each quarter, and the year totals, with the headings frozen and set to print landscape.
- Save as web page saves a stand-alone copy that opens full width in any browser, with no login needed, dated, and ideal for emailing to your accountant or keeping as each quarter’s record.
The app always shows the latest forecast. Saved copies go to your computer’s Downloads folder (or wherever the browser saves files), so a folder of quarterly copies builds into a history of the year.
Ridgeline Landscaping’s demonstration data includes its first quarter of FY2027 (July to September 2026). Its quarterly page shows the start of the story told in Chapter 8: revenue about 4% below forecast, money owed to the business higher than planned as slow-paying customers bite, closing cash a few thousand dollars behind plan, and the quarter’s Cash IN ≥ Cash OUT check showing ✗.
None of that is a crisis on its own. But it is the first quarter of a trend that, left alone, becomes the overdraft described in Chapter 8. Caught here, the action is small: chase the overdue invoices, check whether the season’s prices still cover costs, and hold drawings to what the quarter actually earned. That is the quarterly review doing its job. (Demonstration figures are illustrative and may be updated.)
- Cost actuals: the import will also read cost of sales, wages and total expenses from the same profit and loss file, so every cash-out line gets an Actual and Diff.
- Send to the annual sheet: a button to send the four quarters’ totals into the year’s annual figures, with a confirmation first.
- The reserve, quarter by quarter: the Contingency Reserve (one month of cover in the first forecast year, two in the second, three in the third) shown as its own line, so its build-up can be seen each quarter.