Business and starting point
Used on screen and on the printed sheet only.
The month the cash below is measured on. Everything that follows is counted forward from the first day of it.
Cash today
What the business can actually spend right now.
What the account actually holds today, not what is expected to clear.
Business float across mobile money and any payment wallet.
Petty cash and till floats the business can actually spend.
Undrawn headroom you could genuinely use.Counted, and named as borrowing
The facility is counted in the runway, because it is cash the business can reach. It is also somebody else’s money, so the result says what the runway would be without it, and the repayments that would follow are not in these figures unless you put them below.
A normal month, coming in
What the business expects to actually receive, not what it invoices.
Paid at the point of sale. Money that is yours the moment the sale happens.
What you expect credit customers to actually pay you in a normal month.
Rent received, commissions, anything else that arrives every month.
Cash sales and collections are asked for separately on purpose. In a monthly total they are the same money; in a tight month they are not, because one has already been received and the other depends on somebody else paying you.
A normal month, going out
Everything that leaves the account in an ordinary month.
What you pay suppliers for goods and materials in a normal month.
Including your own, if you take one.
Power, water, internet, airtime.
Delivery, running vehicles, staff movement.
Capital and interest leaving the account each month.
PAYE, NSSF, VAT and anything else paid over every month.
Insurance, security, repairs, professional fees, subscriptions.
Loan repayments and tax are marked as committed. They are counted like everything else, and the cost-cut scenario leaves them alone, because a bank does not accept fifteen per cent of a repayment.
Known one-off payments
Optional. Payments that are coming but are not in a normal month.
A tax assessment, an annual insurance renewal, an equipment purchase, a supplier settlement. Each is carried in the month it falls due rather than spread across the year, and that is the whole reason this answer is better than cash divided by monthly costs.
Your minimum
Optional. The level you never want the business to fall below.
Most businesses stop being able to operate some distance above nought, not at it. Put that level in and the tool will tell you when you reach it rather than only when the money is gone.
The runway you want to hold
Used twice: as the target, and as the period every figure is quoted over.
The result works out three ways to hold it: cash put in once, less going out every month, or more collected every month. It is also the window the lowest balance and the funding requirement are measured over, because those figures only mean something against a stated period. The projection itself runs 24 months either way.
Estimated cash runway
Enter what the business holds and what it spends
Put in what the business holds today, what a normal month brings in and what it pays out, and the answer appears here as you type.
What you will get
Fill in the cash, the monthly figures and anything one-off that is coming, and the answer appears here as you type.
- How many months the cash lasts, and the month it runs short
- The lowest balance you reach, and what has to be found to stay above nought
- What a fall in sales does to it, and what a cut in operating costs does to it
- Three ways to hold the runway you want: cash in once, less out each month, or more collected each month
- The whole projection, month by month, with one-off payments in the months they fall
Rebuilding your cash forecast every month?
This calculator works from the figures you type in. Your business already has them.
OraOS Business connects sales, customer collections, purchasing, expenses and cash, so the position comes out of the records themselves rather than being reassembled from a bank statement and a wage book every month.
- Cash sales and collections from the transactions themselves
- Costs and commitments from the expenses as they are recorded
- The runway moving as the month moves, not once a month
- Financing readiness beside the cash position
A separate product, with its own pricing and its own pilot. This calculator stays free either way.
Ora Account
Coming soonSave cash positions, compare results and reopen your work across Ora Tools when the Ora Account launches. It will be free.
Nothing on this page asks you to sign in, and nothing you enter leaves your browser today.
What the account will doOra Tools Pro
Coming soonSaved positions, several scenarios side by side, a runway tracked month against month, and export to PDF and spreadsheet are intended for Pro.
None of it exists yet, and no price has been set. The calculation on this page is complete and free, and will stay that way.
Free and Pro, comparedYour calculation runs in your browser. The figures you enter, including bank balances, overdraft limits, salaries and loan repayments, are never sent to Ora, and are kept only in this browser so that a refresh does not lose them. Clearing the form removes them. Like any website, Ora Tools counts anonymous page views, which carry nothing you typed. The projection runs 24 months and is arithmetic on what you entered, not a forecast of your market.