What a job costs is not the same question as when you need the money
A profitable job can still put you out of business if the outgoings land months before the income. Cash flow spreads the whole job across the programme — costs out, claims in, and the net line underneath that tells you how much of your own money is in it right now.
Available on the Builder plan
Read the bottom line, not the top one
All three sit on the same period columns, so a month's outgoings line up with that month's income and the net figure underneath.
Expenses
What the job costs, spread over time.
Income
What you expect to claim, from the contract stages.
Net cash position
The two combined. Expenses alone tell you what the job costs; this tells you how much of your own money is in it at any point — the number that decides whether you can take on the next job.
A cost curve is not a cash curve
Three inputs decide when money actually leaves. The third is the one people skip, and it is the whole difference between the two curves.
- When the cost happens
- Task dates in the schedule
- How much
- The task’s cost, or its linked purchase order
- When it is actually paid
- Payment method and payment extra days
Work done in week 6 on 30-day terms is paid in week 10. That gap is exactly what you have to fund, and it is invisible on a cost report.
Stages that move when the job moves
Income is built from the project's contract stages — each stage's value, on its expected date.
Link a stage to a schedule task and it takes its date from that task.Link the lock-up stage to the lock-up task, and the income moves whenever the programme moves — instead of sitting on a date somebody typed in March and never revisited.
The curve bank managers ask for
S-Curve on the toolbar draws the money out and the money in as two cumulative lines across the same periods the table is showing, with today marked. The gap between the lines at any point is how much of your own money is in the job that month.
It is built from the table you are already looking at, so it follows whatever you have filtered or grouped — the picture and the figures cannot disagree. Hover any point for out, in and net; Show the numbers turns it back into a table, and both export.
Worth having before you ask
A bank or a broker asking for a cash flow usually means a curve, not a spreadsheet. It is one button on a job you have already programmed.
The question it actually answers
Not “is this job profitable?” — the estimate answered that. This answers “can I afford to run it, and can I afford to start the next one before this one finishes?”
For a builder growing from ten jobs a year to thirty, that is the question that decides whether growth works or breaks the business.
A closer look at cash flow
Three sections on one set of period columns.
What it connects to
Nothing in SmarteBuild is an island — that is the point of it. Cash Flow reads from and feeds into these.
Schedule & Gantt
Plan the build, move a date, and see what shifts with it
Progress Claims
Claim by percentage or by stage, variations included, and track payment
Purchase Orders
Raise orders straight from the BOQ and send them without re-keying
Projects & Costings
Contract stages, markups and the numbers behind every job
Want the detail?
The help centre documents Cash Flow step by step, with worked examples — written for people using it, not for a brochure.
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