Cash Conversion Cycle Tracker Spreadsheet
This spreadsheet works out how many days your money is out of your hands, and prices every one of those days.
Stock sits, customers take their time, and suppliers give you some of it back. Almost nobody adds those three up, so the overdraft gets discussed every year and the thing causing it never does. This file writes the sum down in days, then in money.
What is in it
- Money In — one row per sales invoice: the date you raised it, what it was for, what you invoiced, what the goods cost and the date the money arrived.
- Money Out — one row per purchase: what you paid, how long it sat before you sold it, and the date you paid for it.
- The Three Legs — stock days, customer days, supplier days and the gap between them, all weighted by money rather than averaged across invoices.
- Price Of A Day — cost of sales divided by 365, and what taking one, seven, fourteen or thirty days out of the cycle releases in cash.
- By Month — the same three legs month by month, so a cycle creeping up two days a month shows up long before it becomes a cash crisis.
- By What You Sell — the cycle for each group you sell, plus Setup and an Overview that puts the whole year on one screen.
Who it is for
Anywhere money goes out before it comes back: a merchant, a wholesaler, a manufacturer, a printer, a contractor, a food producer, a distributor, an agency. If you hold no stock at all, leave the days-it-sat column at zero and the file becomes a debtor and creditor days tracker, which is still two thirds of the sum.
The worked example
In the worked year, stock sits for 46 days, customers take 60 and suppliers give back 22 — a cycle of 84 days that ties up $537,863 against an arranged facility of $385,000.
A day of sales at cost is $6,402. That business gives 30 days and gets paid in 60; close both halves of the gap and the cycle falls to 31 days, releasing $338,697 of cash with no loan, no price rise and no discount.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Order on WhatsApp — $9
Orders are taken on WhatsApp: message me and I’ll send the payment details, then the files as soon as the payment is confirmed.
A look inside the file
Questions people actually ask
How do I calculate my cash conversion cycle?
Days your money sits in stock, plus the days your customers take, less the days your suppliers give you. In the worked year that is 46 plus 60 less 22, so 84 days, tying up $537,863 against a facility of $385,000 and costing $52,711 a year in interest. One day of that cycle is your cost of sales divided by 365, which is $6,402 here, and that single number turns every argument about stock levels, chasing and paying into the same piece of arithmetic.
We do not hold stock at all. Is it any use to us?
Yes. Leave the days-it-sat column at zero and the file becomes a debtor and creditor days tracker, which is still two thirds of the sum, and service businesses use it exactly that way. It works anywhere money goes out before it comes back: a manufacturer, a printer, a contractor, a food producer, a distributor, an agency.
We do not know how long our stock sits before it sells.
Estimate it, because it is the only estimate in the file and it is meant to be one. A fortnight either way will not change the answer, and a rough number you can produce today beats a precise one nobody will ever record. Everything else comes off paperwork you already have: five things per row on two sheets, two of them dates.
Does it work in Google Sheets, and is there a subscription?
It works in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice, and there is no subscription. It is built as .xlsx for Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and loads into Google Sheets through File then Import then Upload. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create and nothing to install.
We already have a cash flow forecast, and does this hold personal data?
A forecast tells you what is coming; this tells you why it takes so long to arrive, which is the question you can actually do something about. It holds invoices and purchases grouped by what they were for, with no names. It is not an accounts package, a stock system or credit control software, it predicts nothing, and it will not make anybody pay you faster; it tells you exactly what one more day of waiting is worth.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes you buy something, hold it for a while and sell it. If your money moves differently — a contractor on stage payments with retention held back for a year, an importer whose cash is gone sixty days before the container lands, a food producer whose stock has a shelf life measured in days — I can build the same arithmetic around how your own money actually moves.
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