On today’s figures, when does your money run out? Then test what would change it. About ten minutes. No accounting knowledge needed.
This is a single web page that does its sums inside your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, sent to us, or saved on any website. There is no login and no database.
We count how many people open the page and which buttons get pressed. No names, no figures, no cookies.
Catch one: the page remembers your figures in this browser, so press Reset when you finish on a shared computer. Catch two: Save puts a copy on your computer, and that is the only way to keep your work.
Today’s position. Import your accounts, or type the figures in. Blanks count as nil, so a rough estimate beats a gap.
Importing fills in the boxes below and builds your cost list in stage 3. It reads a trial balance, or a balance sheet and profit and loss together. Several files at once is fine.
A trial balance is a list of every account in your bookkeeping with its balance beside it. It is the most useful file to import, because it holds what you own and owe as well as what you earn and spend.
Xero: Accounting → Reports → Trial Balance → set the date to your last month end → Export → CSV.
QuickBooks: Reports → search “Trial Balance” → set the dates → export icon → CSV.
Sage Business Cloud: Reporting → Trial Balance → choose the period → Export → CSV. In Sage 50: Financials → Trial Balance → Export.
Anything else: use the blank template above. Two columns is all it needs — the name of the account and the amount.
Nothing is uploaded. The file is read by this page on your own computer.
VAT you charge was never your money — you hold it for HMRC, subtract the VAT on your own purchases, and pay the difference every three months.
So it changes nothing about your profit, but it empties your bank in lumps. That is why businesses rarely run out of money gently: they fall over on a payment date. The three-monthly drops on the cash chart in stage 5 are these payments.
Pick how you sell. Repeat customers → first. Job by job → second. Not selling yet → third. The boxes below change with your choice.
Sort each cost by what it does when your sales move. Five minutes here decides most of your answer.
Two businesses, identical on paper. Both invoice £100,000 a month and spend £90,000, so both make £10,000.
An agency has £72,000 of salaries, rent and software. A shop has £63,000 of stock it only buys when it sells something.
Sales fall 10%. The agency saves almost nothing. The shop buys less stock.
That is what “locked in” means wherever you see it here: fixed plus stepped, as a share of your total cost. It is the spending that still arrives in a month when nothing sells.
Nearly everybody guesses low. Any one cost feels like something you could deal with, but “could cancel, given three months and an awkward conversation” is not the same as “falls away by itself this month”.
It cuts both ways on growth. A high locked-in share means each extra £1,000 of sales is nearly all profit. The catch is stepped costs: growth crosses a line where you need another person or a bigger unit, and that lump lands before the sales that justify it. That is how a profitable business runs out of money.
| What the cost is | How it behaves | How much | Per how many customers | Real money? |
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Leave it ticked for anything you actually pay out. Untick it for depreciation, which lowers your profit without money leaving your account. Unticked costs still count against profit, but are ignored when we work out your bank balance.
Change one thing and watch stage 5 move. The from box sets when it starts.
Prices. Most businesses can only reprice at renewal, so a rise phases in evenly over twelve months. That is why +5% does not add 5% next month. Nothing else moves, so it all lands on profit.
Keep more customers. Replaces the retention figure from stage 2, from the month you choose. Only does anything if you picked the retention option there.
New business. Scales your stage 2 figure. 100% is as you are, 150% is half again, 0% is winning nothing — a useful worst case.
Cut every cost / fixed costs only. A percentage off every line, or off the fixed ones alone. The second is more realistic: variable costs are usually a price you cannot argue with, while fixed costs are choices.
One-off costs. What the change costs to make — redundancy, exit fees, advice. It comes out of profit and out of your bank in the month you pick.
How the sums work. Every slider move rebuilds all the months from your own figures: sales, then each cost by its behaviour, then when money actually arrives and leaves, then VAT. No industry averages, nothing hidden.
A slider assumes you get the change and keep it, with no side effects. Real changes have them, so test the side effect too.
Put prices up 5% and some customers will leave — lower retention at the same time and see if you are still better off. Cut costs and something gets slower, so add the redundancy cost on the right. Win more new business and you will have paid to get it.
Used that way these sliders are a fair guide. Used alone, they will flatter you.
Your sales less your costs across the whole period. It ignores when money moves, so you can show a profit and still be short of cash — which is why the next box exists.
The month your bank balance first goes below nil, on these figures. If it never does, this shows the lowest point instead. This is the number that decides whether you have a problem this year, and it is driven as much by when people pay you as by whether you are profitable.
The level of sales that would leave you at exactly nil profit. Below it you are losing money, above it you are making it. We work it out by taking the costs that arrive whatever happens, and seeing how much you must sell to cover them once your sales-linked costs are paid.
Your fixed and stepped costs as a share of total cost, from how you sorted them in stage 3. The higher it is, the more a quiet month hurts, because little of your spending falls away with your sales. Above about 70% is worth taking seriously.
Money left at each month end. Red is below nil.
A word on what this is. This tool gives you a considered estimate from the figures you enter. It is not a statutory forecast, an audit, or financial, tax or investment advice, and it does not model corporation tax, interest, borrowing, seasonality or anything specific to your trade. Decisions with real consequences deserve a proper look at your actual books — do not rely on this alone.
Built by Your Books and Balances — accountancy, bookkeeping and financial forecasting for SMEs. ybab.co.uk · 07471 422082