Marketing & ROI
Cash Flow Calculator
Enter operating, investing, and financing line items to calculate net cash flow — the true measure of whether a business is generating or consuming cash.
Enter positive values for inflows and outflows — use the sign indicator to set whether each item is cash in (+) or cash out (−). Outflows are treated as negative by default for investing and financing activities.
Operating Activities
Investing Activities
Financing Activities
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How the calculation works
Net Cash Flow = Operating CF + Investing CF + Financing CF
Operating CF: Cash from core business — net income, depreciation (add back), working capital changes.
Investing CF: Usually negative — capital expenditure, acquisitions, asset purchases (outflows) and asset sales (inflows).
Financing CF: Debt repayment, dividend payments (outflows) and new borrowing, equity issuance (inflows).
A positive net cash flow means more cash came in than went out. A healthy business typically has strong positive operating CF funding negative investing CF (growth capex).
Frequently Asked Questions
- Profit is an accounting measure that includes non-cash items (depreciation, accruals) and timing differences (revenue recognised before cash is received). Cash flow shows actual cash movement. A profitable company can be cash-flow negative if it's growing fast or has poor receivables.
- Free Cash Flow (FCF) = Operating Cash Flow − Capital Expenditure. It's the cash available after maintaining and growing the asset base — what's available for debt repayment, dividends, buybacks, or reinvestment. FCF is often considered the best measure of business health.
- Depreciation reduces accounting profit but isn't a cash outflow — the cash left the business when the asset was purchased. Adding it back to net income converts accrual profit to cash profit.
- The core business is consuming more cash than it generates. For a startup or rapidly growing business, this may be acceptable short-term. For a mature business, sustained negative operating cash flow signals a serious problem.
- A formal financial statement (one of the 'Big Three' alongside the income statement and balance sheet) that classifies all cash movements into operating, investing, and financing activities over a period, reconciling net income to the change in cash balance.