What this page is for
Cash Requirements projects the cash you’ll owe your suppliers over future periods, so you can see spending peaks before they arrive. It lays spend out over time - monthly or weekly - and breaks it down by supplier, so finance and planning share one forward view of purchasing cash. Use it to answer questions like “how much will we owe in October?” and “which suppliers drive that peak?” - and to separate the spend you’re already committed to from the spend that’s still a plan. It looks back too: set the Timeframe to past months to see what you spent then, per supplier or per product group.Confirmed vs Planned
The key idea is that each period splits into two kinds of spend:
This split lets you read the report two ways: Confirmed is what you already owe; Confirmed plus Planned is the full picture if the current plan goes ahead.
If you manufacture in house
Where you build rather than buy, there is no purchase order for the finished good - so the report would otherwise show nothing for a month you spend a lot in. Work orders therefore count as spend too, valued at the product’s cost. A build is counted once and only once. Where an outside co-manufacturer’s build already reaches you as a purchase order, the order carries the money and the build adds nothing - counting both would book the same production twice. A build with no such order, and anything you make at your own production sites, is counted on the work order itself.Past periods
Each period holds the spend dated in it: what was received in it and what is still open. A past period therefore shows what you actually received then, valued the way open orders are. The current period shows both: what has already arrived this month and what is still due. Received spend counts only for placed orders. A closed order, or a closed order line, counts what it received and not its open remainder, which will never arrive. Production counts only while it is still to be built. On the Receipt date basis with Only confirmed orders on, past periods show the same spend per supplier and month as the supplier performance report (Supplier spend).The Overdue column
Open spend whose date has already passed gets its own column right before the current period, rather than being folded into the current month or left in the month it was due. It is money you still owe on orders and builds that have not arrived. Showing it as due this month would quietly restate your plan - and on most accounts a good deal of it is old orders nobody ever closed, which would swamp the month it landed in. Keeping it separate means the months stay honest and the backlog stays visible. The column appears only when something is actually past due and the timeframe includes the current period. It drills down like any other: open it to see which suppliers, orders and builds are behind it. A large or growing Overdue column usually means orders need closing in your ERP, or dates need updating.How payment timing is worked out
Spend lands in a period based on when payment is due, not when the order was placed. For each shipment:Payment due date = shipment ETA + payment termsETA is the Estimated Time of Arrival; for a shipment already received it is the date it arrived. The payment terms are taken in order of preference: from the PO if it has them, otherwise from the supplier, otherwise a 30-day default. So a shipment arriving in early October on 30-day terms shows up as cash due in early November, also once it has arrived. For production the completion date stands in for the ETA, and since a work order carries no terms of its own, the supplier’s terms apply (or the 30-day default). Open spend whose due date has already passed goes to the Overdue column instead of a month.
Controls
Drilling in
Any supplier-and-period cell is drillable: open it to see the orders and line items behind the number - and, for your own production sites, the work orders and what each one builds. That’s how you check a surprising figure - you can trace a big month straight back to the specific orders, builds and products driving it.Step by step: plan next quarter’s cash
- Set the view to monthly and look across the next few periods.
- Read each month as Confirmed (already owed) plus Planned (owed only if you place those POs).
- Turn on Only confirmed orders to see your hard commitments alone, then turn it off to see the full plan.
- Find the peak month and drill into the biggest suppliers to see which POs and line items drive it.
- Export the projection to hand to finance.
Example
A planner opens Cash Requirements and sees October running high. Toggling Only confirmed orders cuts the month nearly in half - most of the spike is Planned, from Recommended POs not yet placed. Drilling into the top supplier shows two large orders arriving late September; on 30-day terms, their payment falls due in October. The planner now knows the peak is discretionary and can defer if cash is tight.Tip: When a month looks alarming, check the Confirmed vs Planned split first - a peak made of Planned spend is still yours to change. See Purchase orders for the order statuses behind the buckets, and Supplier spend for the historical counterpart to this forward view.