How Float Works (Video Demo): Cash Flow Forecasting for Xero and QuickBooks

Polly Wong
September 16, 2026
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What the video covers

  • How Float syncs with Xero, QuickBooks Online and FreeAgent
  • Reading the cash flow graph and table
  • Adjusting invoice and bill payment dates, including split payments
  • Building budgets for future income and expenses
  • Modelling scenarios without touching the base forecast
  • Setting a cash threshold alert
  • The 13-week short-term view
  • Consolidating cash across multiple entities

The operating cash flow view that gives you one live cash position

Float combines reconciled bank balances with forecast invoices, bills and budgets into a single cash position, updated as new bank data comes through. There's no piecing it together across a bank portal, the accounting system and a spreadsheet separately.

Zoom out to a monthly forecast running three years ahead, or zoom in to the 13-week weekly view built for day-to-day decisions. Same live data underneath, just the horizon the moment calls for.

How does cash flow forecasting actually work in Float

Float pulls invoices, bills and bank transactions from the connected accounting platform every 24 hours. That data forms the base forecast, plotted as a single line across the cash flow graph, broken down into a table that mirrors the existing chart of accounts.

The sync runs one way. Changing a payment date or splitting an invoice inside Float adjusts the forecast, not the accounting software underneath it.

Two things extend that base picture. Unpaid invoices and bills can be corrected in place. If a client is going to pay late, the date changes. If they're paying in two instalments, the invoice can be split by value or by percentage, and the forecast adjusts to match. Where the pattern is already known, Smart Expected Dates uses historic payment behaviour per customer or supplier to set the date automatically.

Budgets cover what hasn't been invoiced yet. Each is a placeholder for expected income or spend, sat under the relevant category, and several budgets can stack under one category if needed. When the matching actual comes through from Xero and QuickBooks, it fills the budget rather than adding to it, so nothing gets counted twice.

How to build a 13-week cash flow forecast in Float

The 13-week view takes the same base forecast and narrows it to a weekly breakdown, built for the question that matters when cash is tight: what's going out in the next two or three weeks, and where is there room to move.

A breakdown option sits alongside the weekly view, useful when a single week shows an unexpected peak or dip and the cause isn't obvious from the graph alone.

A threshold can be set against the forecast, zero by default, adjustable to match an overdraft or credit line. When the forecast is due to cross it, Float flags it in advance rather than after the balance drops.

Scenario planning and multi-entity forecasting

Scenarios sit on top of the base forecast, not inside it. A new hire, a lost client, a delayed round, each gets modelled separately, and the base forecast stays untouched until a scenario is confirmed. At that point, it merges into the base forecast in a single click.

For businesses running more than one entity, each with its own bank accounts, currencies and accounting platform, a consolidation view brings all of them into one combined cash position.

Want to see this forecast built from your own data?

Connect your Xero or QuickBooks and Float builds this same view from your own accounting data. Start your 14-day free trial. No credit card required.

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