Free cash flow calculator
Reconstruct the cash flow statement from the GL alone and test whether reported profit translates into real cash.
- General ledger alone
- Compares with last year
What it checks
- Every block is signed as cash impact: money in is positive, money out is negative. There is no block that is stated as a positive outflow, so no line has to be read against its own sign.
- CF op: net income, plus non-cash charges, plus the reversal of gains and losses that belong to another block, plus working-capital movements.
- CF inv: disposal proceeds less purchases of fixed assets, less net long-term deposits placed.
- CF fin: new borrowings and equity issued, less repayments, dividends paid, lease principal, and interest paid if the interest policy places it here.
- FCF = CF op + CF inv — operating cash less everything the business put into investing, whatever form it took.
- Reconciliation: CF op + CF inv + CF fin + FX effect on cash must equal the raw Δ on Cash on Hand + Bank Accounts.
How the result is read
The indirect method forces reported profit to reconcile with real cash. AR growth corroborates Revenue Cutoff; inventory growth ties to NRV and SLOB; AP growth to Unrecorded Liabilities. Every block carries its own sign, so the statement is read by addition throughout and the reconciliation survives a year in which investing turns net positive or financing turns net inflow. Two figures cannot come off a balance movement: CapEx, because assets are capitalised on invoice and paid weeks later, and anything whose balance nets two directions — borrowings drawn and repaid in the same year, dividends and interest where the charge is not the payment.
The worksheet, on the demo engagement
Cash Flow & FCF, as the application draws it for Harrow Precision Engineering Ltd, the fictional demo engagement — one node per cash-flow line, grouped by block.
- Increase
- Decrease
- Subtotal
- CF op
- +2,375
- CF inv
- (2,640)
- FCF
- (265)
- CF fin
- (2,000)
Indirect-method cash-flow statement built from the GL alone. Expand any line to see what it is made of; the lowest level opens the trial-balance accounts or the journal entries behind it. Every block is signed as cash impact — money in positive, money out negative — so the statement reads by addition throughout: FCF = CF op + CF inv, and CF op + CF inv + CF fin gives the movement in cash, which must reconcile to the raw movement on the cash accounts. The residual is the gap, and it carries only what the statement genuinely cannot explain.
Result grid5 rows
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| CF op — Cash Flow from Operations | +2,375 |
| CF inv — Cash Flow from Investing | (2,640) |
| FCF — Free Cash Flow (CF op + CF inv) | (265) |
| CF fin — Cash Flow from Financing | (2,000) |
| Cash reconciliation | (155) |
In the application
Free cash flow calculator is filed under Planning & analytics, index letter A. "Run all analyses" runs it with every other analysis the ledger can answer. The worksheet states the population it tested on its face — or "Not applicable" with the reason when a column it depends on is empty — and the Excel workbook the engagement exports files it under A, beside an index of the source files with their SHA-256 fingerprints.
Also listed in the application as Cash Flow & FCF
.
Read it with
Run your next audit file test without the Excel crash.
One free engagement to evaluate, valid 60 days. The ledger never leaves the machine.
- 20 minutes
- Runs on a fictional engagement
- No client data required