Available funds report: What it is and how to build one

An available funds report shows leadership how much cash your business can deploy right now and over the next few weeks, after commitments.

If you need to build an available funds report from scratch, you need four inputs, a fixed sequence for combining them, and a cadence that matches how tight your cash is.

What is an available funds report?

An available funds report is an internal liquidity report that combines cash on hand, near-term receivables, committed outflows, and available credit into one figure for deployable cash.

A controller or finance lead usually builds it. The chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), and board read it. You'll lean on it most in three situations:

• Weekly operating reviews: Leadership sees whether spending plans still fit the cash you have.
• Before big commitments: A new hire class, a large inventory buy, or a multiyear contract all need a yes or no on funding.
• Tight cash periods: When runway shrinks, the report becomes the first thing leadership checks.

Report of available funds has another meaning: a mortgage marketing mailer that estimates how much home equity you could cash out. The business report is a different document entirely.

The report supports a cash availability assessment, which answers one question: Can we fund this, and when? A clean available funds figure lets you give that answer with dates attached.

Components of an available funds report

Every available funds report draws on four inputs, plus forward projections for scenarios, each with its own source and owner.

Cash on hand

Start with balances in your operating and reserve accounts, then separate cleared funds from pending deposits and outgoing items that haven't posted. A deposit that shows in the portal but hasn't cleared isn't spendable yet.

Exclude restricted cash, such as collateral held against a letter of credit or funds earmarked by a grant. Also exclude any minimum balance your bank or your own policy requires you to hold. If you keep a $250,000 operating floor, that $250,000 doesn't count as available.

Expected inflows (receivables aging)

Group open AR into five aging buckets: current, 1–30 days, 31–60 days, 61–90 days, and 90+ days past due. Count only the share of each bucket you expect to collect inside the report window.

Older invoices are less likely to be paid, so count only a portion of them. A common starting point is to count 95% of current AR, 85% of the 1–30 bucket, 65% of 31–60, 40% of 61–90, and 10% or less of anything past 90 days. Replace those percentages with your own collection history once you have 6–12 months of data.

Committed outflows

Committed outflows include approved bills, scheduled vendor payments, payroll, debt service, and card balances coming due. Date each item to when the cash will leave your account.

A commitment counts against available funds when it's approved, not when it's paid. If you approved a $40,000 vendor invoice yesterday that clears in 10 days, that $40,000 is already spoken for today.

Line-of-credit headroom

Headroom is the undrawn portion of your credit facility that you can draw today. It's capped by the lower of your committed limit and your borrowing base, which for an asset-based line usually equals a percentage of eligible AR and inventory.

Covenants can shrink that number further. A minimum liquidity covenant of $1 million, for example, means you can't draw the line down to a point that pushes you under that floor. Your lender holds the authoritative figure, so treat any number from your own model as an estimate until the lender confirms it.

Forward projections and scenarios

Projections cover the income and spend you expect inside the report window but haven't booked yet, such as new sales, renewals, or planned hires. Build a base case and a downside case, where the downside might delay your largest receipt by 30 days or cut new bookings by 20%.

These projections usually live in an FP&A model or spreadsheet. Keep them clearly separated from booked figures so leadership knows which part of the number is committed and which part is a forecast.

Available funds vs. cash flow forecast

An available funds report gives you a point-in-time view of deployable cash, plus the next few weeks. A cash flow forecast projects every inflow and outflow over a longer horizon, often 12–18 months, to show where cash is heading.

Use the available funds report for near-term funding decisions and the forecast for planning. They should feed each other, but they answer different questions.

How to build an available funds report

You build the report in seven steps, from scoping the window to summarizing the result for leadership.

1. Define the report window and audience

Pick a 30-day window if your cash is predictable, with steady receipts and few large one-off payments. Choose 13 weeks if you have lumpy collections, seasonal swings, or a debt payment coming up in the next quarter.

Then decide who reads the report. A CEO wants the headline number and the risks. A board wants the bridge and the trend. A lender wants covenant figures and borrowing-base detail. Your audience sets how much detail goes in the main view versus the appendix.

2. Pull current balances across every account

Consolidate balances from every operating, reserve, and investment account into one sheet, pulled on the same day. Mixing a Monday balance from one bank with a Thursday balance from another creates gaps you'll spend time explaining.

Subtract restricted cash and your minimum-balance target before anything else. What remains is your deployable starting point.

3. Layer in receivables by aging bucket

Apply a collection probability to each receivables aging bucket and add only the expected collections that land inside your window. Use your own historical rates where you have them.

Flag concentration risk while you're here. If one customer makes up more than 20% of open AR, call it out by name because a single late payment from that account moves the whole figure.

4. Subtract committed outflows

List every approved but unpaid bill, payroll run, tax payment, and debt service payment, each dated to when it'll clear. Payroll and tax deadlines are fixed, so place them first.

Include card balances due and any recurring contracts with auto-debit dates. Missing a single quarterly estimated tax payment can overstate available funds by six figures.

5. Add credit headroom

Get the current undrawn amount and borrowing-base figure from your lender, ideally from the latest borrowing-base certificate. Add only what you can draw today without breaching a covenant.

Note each covenant threshold next to the headroom figure, such as minimum liquidity or a maximum leverage ratio. Leadership needs to see how close you are to each limit as well as how much is left.

6. Run a base case and a downside scenario

Show the available funds figure under both cases, side by side. The gap between them tells leadership how much cushion the plan depends on.

Name the two or three assumptions that move the number most. For most businesses, those are timing of the largest receivable, collection rates on aged AR, and any large discretionary payment you could defer.

7. Summarize into one leadership-ready view

Lead with a headline number: available funds today and at the end of the window. Follow it with a short bridge from opening cash to available funds, then the top risks and any decisions leadership needs to make.

1. Opening cash
2. Minus restricted cash
3. Plus expected collections
4. Minus committed outflows
5. Plus credit headroom
6. Equals available funds

A one-page summary built on this bridge gives leadership the number, the reasons behind it, and the decisions that depend on it.

How often to run an available funds report

Weekly works for most operating teams. Move to daily during tight cash periods or in the run-up to a large commitment, and use a monthly version for board packs, timed with your month-end close.

Speed up your cadence when any of these triggers applies:

• Runway under six months: Every week of spending now matters to the timeline.
• AR concentration above 20%: One customer's payment timing can swing the figure.
• Debt maturity within 90 days: You need to confirm you can repay or refinance on schedule.
• Fundraise in progress: Investors will ask, and the close date is rarely fixed.

Start weekly and tighten the cadence as soon as a trigger applies, then relax it once the trigger clears.

Best practices for presenting available funds to leadership

Leadership reads the report to make a decision, so build the presentation around that decision.

• Lead with the number and the change: Open with available funds today and the change since the last report, and move supporting detail to an appendix.
• Show the bridge behind the balance: Walk from opening cash to available funds so leadership sees which line moved the figure.
• Set thresholds and flag them early: Define a minimum available funds level and call out when you're within 10%–15% of it, before you cross it.
• Keep one owner and one source per component: Assign each line of the bridge to one person and one system to avoid reconciliation arguments in the meeting.

A report that leads with the number and explains its movement gets you a decision in the meeting instead of a follow-up request.

Common mistakes when building an available funds report

Four errors account for most overstated available funds figures.

Counting the bank balance as available funds

Your bank balance includes pending deposits that may not clear, restricted cash you can't touch, and money already committed to approved bills. Treating that balance as available inflates the figure, sometimes by a full payroll cycle.

Always start from the balance and subtract down. Never start from the balance and stop.

Treating all receivables as collectible

Carrying aged AR at face value overstates liquidity. An outstanding invoice 90 days past due rarely converts in the next 30 days, and some never convert.

Apply an expected collection rate to each aging bucket every cycle, and revisit the percentages each quarter against what you collected.

Using a stale credit-line figure

Borrowing-base availability changes as your eligible AR and inventory change. Last month's figure can be off by hundreds of thousands of dollars after a slow collection month.

Confirm the undrawn amount and borrowing base with your lender every cycle you run the report.

Mixing the report with the long-range forecast

Folding 12-month projections into the available funds figure blurs the near-term decision the report exists to support. Leadership ends up debating next year's revenue plan instead of whether you can fund this month's commitments.

Keep the forecast as a separate document and reference it only for the downside scenario. Keeping the two separate means every number in the report ties to cash you can see or commitments you've already made.

Keep available funds visible in real time with Ramp

Most available funds reports go stale the day you build them. Balances, receivables, and approved bills live in separate systems, so you're re-pulling the same numbers every week and still missing the dip that happens between reports.

Ramp Business Banking gives you a live view of the operating cash you can deploy. Cash Manager lets you set configurable balance targets and low-balance alerts, so you get a warning before you fall below your floor instead of after. Ramp AR shows what's coming in and when, and Bill Pay shows the approved and scheduled bills already spoken for.

Here's what your available funds view looks like with Ramp:

• Set your operating floor once: Configure balance targets in Cash Manager so your minimum balance is built into the view.
• Catch shortfalls before they happen: Low-balance alerts warn you as you approach your threshold.
• See receivables by timing: Ramp AR shows expected inflows so you can build your collections line faster.
• Track committed outflows as they're approved: Bill Pay shows approved and scheduled bills, so commitments count the moment they're approved.

Try an interactive demo to see how Ramp keeps your available cash in view, and why the median Ramp customer saves 7.5% on expenses in their first year.