Payment forecast

The payment forecast shows how much cash you need to pay suppliers and when. Rows are suppliers, columns are months, and each cell shows the amount expected to be paid to that supplier in that month.

All figures use your organisation's base currency, so purchase orders in different currencies can be added together.

The forecast comes with payment terms in instalments, which are included in the Pro plan and above. On another plan, the page shows what the report does and an invitation to upgrade.

Open the payment forecast

1. Open Reports in the top navigation bar.
2. Choose Payment Forecast from the list of reports.
3. Pick a period with the Quick Dates list, or enter your own Start Date and End Date.
4. Optionally narrow the view with the Department filter.

The report opens on This Year. The other quick ranges are deliberately forward-looking: This Month, Next 30 Days, Next 90 Days, Next 6 Months, Next 12 Months, This + Next Year, and Custom. A period can cover at most 36 months. A longer period is refused with a message asking for a shorter one.

The date range filters forecast payment dates, not purchase order dates. For example, a purchase order raised two years ago with a payment due next March appears when the range covers next March.

You need the reports permission to open the page. Without it, Reports does not appear in the navigation bar at all.

Understand the figures

The report considers Approved, Pending and Draft purchase orders. It keeps fully received orders because their payments can still be in the future. It also keeps already-paid orders, but reports them separately so they do not inflate what you still have to find. Orders marked Not Approved and orders belonging to deleted suppliers are excluded.

Below the supplier rows, two bands split the same outstanding amount:

Still to pay, by approval status separates Approved firm commitments from Not approved amounts that depend on Draft or Pending orders being approved. The Not approved footer line does not mean orders with the Not Approved status, which are excluded.

Still to pay, by invoice coverage separates From invoices amounts, whose date is already settled, from Forecasted amounts, marked (no invoice yet). From invoices includes instalments backed by recorded supplier invoices and instalments anchored to dates that already exist, such as the purchase order date, approval date or goods actually received. Forecasted includes amounts still resting on a substitute date, such as an instalment due from an invoice that has not been recorded yet. Despite the (no invoice yet) label, an instalment anchored to a date that already exists counts under From invoices even before its invoice arrives.

Below these bands are Still to pay, Paid and Total.

A supplier you have settled in full remains in the list, shown muted and struck through with a Paid badge. Its row reads from paid amounts rather than future cash, so the supplier does not disappear as soon as you pay it.

How payment dates are calculated

A payment term has one or more instalments. Each instalment has a percentage of the order, an anchor event that starts the clock and an offset in days. The percentages in a term must add up to 100.

Anchors can be the purchase order date, approval date, invoice date, receipt date, or the end of the invoice or receipt month. An instalment can also fix a day of the month. The offset is applied first; payment then lands on that day in the month the offset reaches, or on the last day if that month is shorter.

The purchase order's own payment term takes precedence. If it has none, the supplier's default payment term is used. If neither has a term, or the term has no instalment rules, the order cannot be forecast and is excluded from every figure on the page.

Missing terms and expected delivery dates

The banner counts every approved purchase order that still has something left to pay, including fully received orders. A Draft or Pending order without a usable payment term is also missing from the figures, but is not listed in the banner.

A second banner lists orders that lack an expected delivery date and has its own Fix button. A date set there keeps the order's status and is recorded in its history.

Neither banner follows the date filter, so their counts do not change when you change the period.

Substitute dates

When an instalment's anchor date does not exist yet, the forecast substitutes the closest date it has.

For receipt-anchored instalments, it uses the actual receipt date once goods arrive, the expected delivery date while you are waiting, and the purchase order date as a last resort.

For invoice-anchored instalments, it uses the recorded invoice date first, then receipt or expected delivery, then the purchase order date. If an order has only partly arrived, the part not yet invoiced is dated from the expected delivery date, or the last receipt if that is later, because those goods are still to come.

An instalment anchored to the approval date falls back to the purchase order date while the order is unapproved. A calculated date is never earlier than the purchase order date, even with a negative offset such as thirty days before receipt.

A supplier whose forecast uses any substitute date has an amber dot and a why? link beside its name. The link opens Estimated installments, fallback reasons, which lists every instalment for that supplier on a fallback date, its requested anchor, the date used instead and the resulting due date.

How payments affect the forecast

Payments recorded against a purchase order are subtracted from its forecast and applied to its instalments oldest due date first. A fully covered instalment stops appearing as future cash. For a partly covered instalment, the paid part leaves the forecast and the remainder stays.

The Invoices & payments card on the purchase order shows each instalment as Paid or Part paid on that basis, and shows which instalments each payment went to.

Paid amounts appear in the month the payment was actually made, based on the record's Payment Date, not the scheduled instalment month. If an order is reopened and re-approved, its schedule is recalculated, but a payment made in January stays on the Paid line in January. This keeps the report reconciled against your books.

There is one exception: if an order is flagged as paid but has no payment records, there is no real payment date, so those amounts fall on the instalment's due date instead.

Payment reminders

StockBold announces an unpaid instalment of an approved purchase order once when it is due within 3 days, and once more if it becomes overdue. The owner can change the 3-day setting in Settings, then Organization, under Payment reminders.

Only instalments with a firm due date count. An instalment still waiting for its anchor event, such as a receipt that has not happened, is not announced.

The reminder goes to the order's default payment assignee and to people with the Manage PO Financials permission, for the orders they can see. The amount is shown only to people allowed to see purchase prices. Each person can turn either reminder off under Payment due soon or overdue in Settings, then Notifications.

Explore and export the report

1. Click an amount in the table to open its purchase order and instalment breakdown. The Still to pay line is a reconciliation line and does not open a breakdown; use Approved, Not approved, From invoices or Forecasted instead.
2. Use How it works in the page header to see the calculation rules on screen.
3. Use Export CSV to export the current view, including supplier rows and totals. The button is unavailable while the report is loading or when there are no supplier rows.

Keep the forecast accurate

Give every payment term you use its instalment rules, and set expected delivery dates on orders that lack them. Record supplier invoices as they arrive and tag each one to the instalment it covers. Record payments as you settle them.

If you change a purchase order's payment term after tagging an invoice to an instalment, tags that no longer match the new term are treated as untagged for forecasting and flagged so you can re-tag them.

Departments and amounts

The Department filter combines with the departments you are already allowed to see. If they do not overlap, the report is empty rather than showing orders outside your access. Without the View Inventory Value permission, amounts appear as a dash; an owner always has this permission.