An ecommerce cash flow forecast starts from what the forecast's sales leave after every cost except the stock itself, adds the VAT customers pay, subtracts stock on your supplier terms, and subtracts the VAT return on the day it is due: in Germany the 10th after the period, or a month later with an extension.
A store can make money every month and still find the account empty on the wrong morning, because profit is booked to the day it is earned while cash leaves on dates other people set. Two of those dates decide most of it for a European store: the day the VAT return is paid, and the day each supplier invoice falls due. Most cash flow templates leave the first one out entirely, and for a store whose prices include VAT it is the line that decides the month: roughly a sixth of every gross euro sits in the account for one or two months and then leaves in one payment. This guide builds a cash flow forecast that knows both dates, month by month, with the VAT calendars of Germany, Austria and Switzerland and a worked month you can redo with your own numbers. It is a planning guide, not tax advice.
In short
- Profit says whether the month worked; cash says whether you can pay on the 10th. A forecast needs both, each on its own calendar.
- VAT collected in a period leaves one or two months later in one payment, minus the VAT you paid on stock in the same period.
- Stock leaves on your supplier terms, on order, on arrival or thirty days after, and the terms move the low point of the year more than the sales do.
- On an example store's order book, the VAT collected came to 16,6% of net revenue: that much of every month's takings belongs to the tax office until the return is paid.
Why profit and cash part ways
Four calendars separate the two: stock is paid before it sells, VAT is paid after it is collected, refunds arrive weeks after their sales, and payouts arrive days after the customer paid. The anatomy of all four, and why a store can be profitable on paper and still short of cash, has its own guide; this one is the forward-looking half, the plan that puts the next twelve months of those calendars on one page before they happen.
Of the four, stock and VAT are the two worth forecasting month by month, because both are large, both move in lumps, and both are known in advance. Refunds and payouts mostly shift money by days or a few weeks, and a reserve handles them better than a forecast does.
When the VAT actually leaves
In Germany the advance VAT return, the Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldung, and its payment are due on the 10th day after the end of the period, as section 18 of the German VAT Act sets out. You file monthly if last year's VAT came to more than €9.000 and quarterly if it came to €9.000 or less, and the tax office can release you from advance returns below €2.000. On application, a permanent one-month extension, the Dauerfristverlängerung, moves every deadline a month later; for a monthly filer it comes with a special prepayment of one eleventh of last year's advance payments, paid in February and credited back against the December return.
In Austria the advance return, the UVA, and its payment are due on the 15th of the second month after the period, as Austria's business service portal sets out: January's VAT is paid on 15 March. A business with no more than €100.000 of turnover in the previous year files quarterly, with payments on 15 May, 15 August, 15 November and 15 February.
In Switzerland the VAT return and its payment are due within 60 days of the end of the period, which for most businesses is a quarter: the first quarter's VAT is due by the end of May.
| Feature | Germany | Austria | Switzerland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usual period | monthly, or quarterly at up to €9.000 of VAT a year | monthly, or quarterly at up to €100.000 of turnover | quarterly |
| Payment due | 10th day after the period | 15th of the second month after | within 60 days after the period |
| One month later | on application, with the extension | already built into the date | already built into the 60 days |
| January's VAT, monthly filer | 10 February, or 10 March with the extension | 15 March | with the first quarter, by the end of May |
The pattern is the same everywhere: the VAT on a month's sales leaves the account somewhere between ten days and two months after the month ends, in one payment. A forecast that books VAT on the day of the sale makes every month look poorer than it is and every payment day look normal, which is the opposite of what the account will actually do.
What the return actually pays
The payment is not the VAT you collected. It is the VAT you collected in the period minus the VAT you paid on what you bought in it, which for most stores is mostly stock. A month that buys a lot of stock can bring a small payment or even a refund; a month that sells from stock bought earlier pays nearly the full amount it collected. That is why the VAT line and the stock line have to be planned together rather than one after the other.
| March | Amount |
|---|---|
| Net revenue | €100.000 |
| VAT collected on it | €19.000 |
| Stock bought in March, net | €40.000 |
| VAT paid on that stock | €7.600 |
| VAT return, paid 10 April or 10 May with the extension | €11.400 |
Read the last line next to the bank. On 10 April the account pays €11.400 for a month that has long been closed, at the same time as April's own stock and April's own costs. If April is a strong month that buys stock for May, the April return will be small and the May payment will not, and a store reading only its bank balance experiences that as a good month followed by a bad one when both months were fine. A VAT calculator splits any gross price into net and tax in a second, which is worth doing once on your own average basket.
Supplier terms move the low point of the year
Stock leaves the account on your supplier's terms, and the four common ones shift the same purchase by up to two months. All on order: the whole invoice is paid when the order is placed, weeks before the goods can sell. Split: a deposit, often 30%, on order and the rest on arrival. On arrival: paid when the goods come in. And thirty days after arrival, the friendliest, because the first weeks of sales come in before the invoice is due.
Take a €40.000 restock with a six-week lead time, ordered on 1 March. All on order, the €40.000 and its VAT leave on 1 March. Split 30/70, €12.000 leaves on 1 March and €28.000 in mid-April. On arrival, all of it leaves in mid-April. Thirty days after arrival, it leaves in mid-May, after the stock has already been selling for a month. The goods and the profit are identical in all four cases; the lowest point of the account moves by two months.
That is why the terms are worth negotiating with the same energy as the price. Moving a supplier from on order to thirty days after arrival is often worth more to a growing store's cash than a few points of discount, and it can cost the supplier less to give, because it shortens your cash conversion cycle without touching the price.
Build the forecast month by month
The forecast has one row per month and five lines, and each one comes from a number you already have or can get in an afternoon. The ecommerce cash flow forecast template has the same lines ready to fill in, in a weekly view and a monthly view.
- Cash today, the starting point. Without it the forecast can only show the change from today.
- Money in: what the forecast's sales leave after every cost except the stock itself, which is operating profit plus the cost of goods, plus the VAT customers pay on top.
- Stock payments: every purchase on your supplier terms, with the VAT on it, in the month each part falls due.
- The VAT return: the VAT collected in the period minus the VAT paid on stock in it, in the month your filing calendar says.
- The balance at the end of each month, with the lowest one marked, because the low point is the number the plan exists to find.
The money-in line looks odd until you see why: the cost of goods is added back because the forecast's profit already subtracts it, while the stock it stands for is paid on the supplier's calendar instead. Counting both would pay for the same goods twice. The sales side of that line comes from a forecast of the months ahead, and the method for that is set out in forecasting sales from your own orders.
Leave out what the plan cannot know well, and say so: income tax payments, loan repayments, and the few days between a sale and the payout that settles it. They sit on top of the plan as known commitments, not inside it as guesses.
A month that makes money and still drains the account
Put the pieces together on the busiest month of the year, with round numbers. Say November brings €150.000 of net revenue and keeps 19,2% of it as operating profit, the share an example store kept over fourteen months: €28.800 earned on paper. Customers also paid €28.500 of VAT at 19%. The €60.000 of stock for December arrives in mid-November with 70% due on arrival: €42.000 plus €7.980 of VAT. November's own VAT return, €28.500 minus the €7.980 paid on that stock, comes to €20.520, and it leaves on 10 December, or on 10 January with the extension, on top of whatever October's return took on 10 November.
Every one of those payments is predictable in October, and none of them shows on November's P&L. A store that plans them sees the low point coming weeks ahead and decides early: a smaller first order, different supplier terms, a short credit line, or a later sale. A store that does not meets the same low point as a surprise in the second week of December, which is the worst week of the year to have one. The sales side of that month has its own checklist, the Black Friday margin checklist, built on the same numbers.
What the cash plan in nouz does
The Forecast page in nouz carries this plan as the cash plan on its Stock & cash tab, built from the same forecast as everything else on the page. Money in is the forecast's EBITDA plus its cost of goods plus the VAT customers pay, counted from tomorrow in the current month. Stock payments come from the purchase plan, on the supplier terms you choose, with VAT. The VAT return is paid on the 10th of the month your cadence says, monthly or quarterly, paid the next month or with a one-month extension, and it reclaims the VAT paid on stock in the period. Enter the cash in your bank today and every month shows a balance; until you do, it shows the change from today.
Three details make it match the account. A payment due before today is treated as already made, so the plan starts from the morning's real position. The VAT rate on stock starts at the rate your own sales carried, and you can change it for a store that buys at a different rate than it sells. And for Austria, choose the cadence with the one-month extension: the plan books the payment on the 10th, five days before the real 15th, which errs on the safe side, while a Swiss quarterly return falls at the end of the second month after the quarter, about three weeks after the plan's date.
Alerts can email you when the plan shows cash falling below a floor you set, and the daily profit email can carry a few lines of the forecast, so the low point arrives as a warning rather than a surprise. Forecast is on every plan.
The rules worth keeping
- In the cash plan, book VAT to the day it leaves the account, not the day it was collected; in the P&L it never was revenue at all.
- Plan stock and VAT together, because the VAT on stock comes back through the same return.
- Know your filing calendar and any extension, and in Germany the special prepayment that comes with it.
- Mark the lowest balance of the year, and decide what to do about it while it is still months away.
- Keep a separate account for VAT, filled weekly, so the payment is a transfer rather than an event.
Shopify's own tax reports are the source for what was collected, at which rates and where; what they are for, and how a P&L treats the same money, is in tax reports and VAT. A cash flow forecast for a European store is mostly two calendars laid over a sales forecast, the supplier's and the tax office's. Neither is hard to know and both are easy to forget, which is why the stores that run out of cash in a profitable year so rarely had a profit problem. Your adviser decides your filing calendar; the plan's job is to follow it.