How Arclane knows which month a project pays for itself
A software agency whose revenue arrives in milestones and whose costs run every single day. Arclane connected accounting and now plans developer capacity against a cash curve that already contains every signed milestone.
The results
12 months
of cash visibility
Day-exact
milestone payments
1
plan for every project
“We know which month a project actually pays for itself — before we sign it.”
Founder, Arclane
Arclane builds custom applications and websites for its clients. It is a good business with an awkward shape: the revenue arrives in a handful of lumps — kickoff, milestone, handover — and the cost of producing it runs every single day, whether or not anything was invoiced that week.
That mismatch is the whole problem. A project can be profitable on paper and still be the reason the account is tight in March, because the work was done in January and February and the money lands in April. The utilisation report does not show that. The bank balance does not show it either, because it shows today.
Payroll is paid in days, project revenue is paid in milestones, and nothing on the desk lined the two up on a calendar.
What they connected
Accounting first. Bookings arrive already assigned to an account, so nothing has to be categorised by hand and the plan ends up using the same numbers the tax advisor does.
- Accounting — actuals, accruals and open items, including the client invoices already issued but not yet paid.
- Banking — the actual balances the forecast starts from, so the curve begins where the money really is.
- Projects and people — signed projects with their milestones, and the developers whose salaries run underneath them.
The first usable forecast was on screen the same afternoon. Nobody built a model — the accounting structure was already the structure of the plan.
How a project is planned now
A project is not one number in a pipeline any more. It is a set of dated milestones with payment terms behind them, so a milestone invoiced on the 20th with 14 days net lands in the cash curve in early the following month — not in the month the work happened. Payroll sits underneath as a continuous cost, day by day. The gap between the two is visible instead of felt.
What that changes at the moment of deciding:
| Before | With Foreqast | |
|---|---|---|
| Number used to decide | Bank balance today | Cash position on the payment date |
| Project revenue | Booked to the month it was won | Dated to when each milestone is paid |
| Payroll | A monthly line item | A daily cost against the same curve |
| Horizon | To the end of the quarter | 12 months, rolling |
We know which month a project actually pays for itself — before we sign it.
The second effect: the next developer
The milestone timing was the reason they started. Hiring is where the model earned its keep a second time. Another developer is a decision with a long tail — recruiting, notice period, ramp-up — and the cost starts months before the extra capacity turns into an invoice that has been paid.
Instead of waiting until the pipeline felt safe enough, Arclane can put the hire in the simulator on a start date, look at the trough it creates, and check that the trough still clears with the milestones already signed. If it does not, the answer is not "no" — it is a later start date, and the plan says which one.
Not that the forecast is right to the euro — no forecast is. What changed is that the two decisions that move the most money in this agency, taking on a project and adding a person, are now made against the same model, on the dates the money actually moves.
Where they are now
Project scheduling now takes the cash date into account, hiring is planned against a visible floor instead of a feeling, and the quarterly spreadsheet rebuild is gone. The forecast updates itself on every sync.
See your agency's next 12 months
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The company
The app
See the money between the project and the payout
- Projects and retainers modelled to their invoice dates
- Day-by-day cash, so a late payment is visible early
- Check a hire against the pipeline before you sign it
No credit card. First forecast in about 20 minutes.
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