Sales are up. Why is cash down?
Growing sales does not always mean more cash in the bank. Adjust the sales and cash-cycle assumptions and see the effect on closing cash immediately.
Before you start: growth on its own does not reduce cash. With quick collection and fast-moving stock, higher sales generate cash. The problem appears when growth arrives with a longer cash cycle. Use the example scenario to see that case.
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How cash moves month by month
Units: thousands of baht. Receivables, inventory, payables and cash are balances at month end and must never be added across months. Revenue, profit and operating cash flow are flows for that month and may be summed.
How it is calculated
The key point: receivable days, inventory days and payable days do not change profit.
What they change is when the money arrives. The more you sell, the larger receivables and inventory become, so cash sits there before it returns. That is how sales can grow while cash falls.
Show the formulas used
Inventory = cash COGS × inventory days ÷ days in month
Purchases = cash COGS + closing inventory − opening inventory
Payables = purchases × payable days ÷ days in month
Operating cash flow = net profit + depreciation − ΔReceivables − ΔInventory + ΔPayables
The worked case, readable without touching a slider
Pressing the example button above produces this case: sales rise to 130% of the delivered level, customers pay in 75 days instead, stock sits for 70 days, and payables stay at 30 days.
Revenue over the twelve months rises 23.79 million baht and net profit 7.23 million. Both are the good news they look like. Closing cash, however, falls 11.61 million, from 21.48 million to 9.87 million.
Where did it go? One line answers it: the cash tied up in receivables and inventory grows 18.84 million. The extra profit is absorbed there first and comes back as cash later. Payroll, rent and suppliers do not wait for that.
The month-by-month table shows something the summary tiles cannot: this company’s cash is negative for 3 months along the way — October 2026 -3,733, November 2026 -3,312, December 2026 -2,726 — bottoming at -3,733 thousand baht in October 2026. The model never borrows on your behalf, so the shortfall simply stands. That is deliberate: the question worth seeing is how large a facility this growth needs and when, not whether a model can paper over it.
One thing this page did not expect: growth on its own does not drain cash. Move only the sales slider to 130%, leaving receivable and inventory days alone, and closing cash rises — the contribution margin is wide enough that growth funds itself. So the failure mode is not selling well. It is selling well while the cash cycle lengthens, which is a different problem with a different fix.
On how far to trust these figures: the engine has been checked against the workbook on four cases, 1,152 values, every one matching to zero. This example is not one of those four. The numbers above come from the engine that passed, not from recalculating this particular case in Excel.
Where the numbers come from
Every driver, opening balance and formula comes from report 09 Rolling Forecast in the advanced set. Open the guide →
Profit after cash COGS in this model is a contribution measure, not a statutory gross profit. Read the guide to report 09 and the definition crosswalk before comparing it with a real set of accounts.
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