How to Create a Cash Flow Chart? Easy to Follow Steps

You’ll agree when we say a cash flow chart is one of the most significant tools in a business.

Well, this chart shows what your business does with the money earned. Besides, it can help you streamline internal operations and make data-backed strategic decisions. Creating Cash Flow Diagrams does not have to be time-consuming and complex. Yes, you read that right.

This blog will walk you through simple steps to start with a Cash Flow Diagram generator. You’ll also come across a ton of easy-to-follow Cash Flow Diagram examples to simplify everything.

If you’re using Excel, which doesn’t have a Cash Flow Chart functionality built in, fret not. The secret is to leverage an intelligent and affordable application, which we’ll talk about later. In this blog, you will see:

What is a Cash Flow Chart?

Definition: A Cash Flow Chart is a powerful visual tool that maps the inflows and outflows of cash for a business or project over a specific period. By clearly showing how money is generated and spent, it provides an instant overview of your company’s financial metrics, liquidity, and free cash flow yield. This key metric indicates how efficiently your business generates cash relative to its market value.

Tracking cash movement with a Cash Flow Chart makes it easier to identify spending trends, manage project budgets, monitor free cash flow yield, and ensure sufficient cash availability for operational needs.

Video Tutorial: How to Make a Cash Flow Chart

How to Make a Cash Flow Chart in Excel?

Why Cash Flow Charts are Important?

A Money Flow Diagram is a crucial part of any in-depth financial analysis. To go beyond surface-level data and uncover hidden insights, you need a clear, easy-to-interpret Money Flow Diagram that transforms complex numbers into actionable intelligence and highlights key business metrics.

Visualizing money movement—whether tracking cash inflows and outflows or representing profit and loss—is essential for processes like cost-benefit analysis and other strategic financial decisions. Common spreadsheet tools like Excel often fall short, as they do not natively provide advanced Money Flow Charts.

Key Components of a Cash Flow Chart

• Cash Inflows: Cash inflows indicate the source of money. Common sources include sales revenue, customer payments, interest income, investments, and financing activities such as loans or equity funding.
• Operating Cash Flow: This component reflects cash generated or used by core business operations, including receipts from customers and payments to suppliers, employees, and service providers. It is a key indicator of business sustainability.
• Investing Cash Flow: Investing cash flow tracks cash used for or generated from long-term assets, such as purchasing equipment, selling property, or investing in securities. It highlights how a business allocates capital for growth.
• Financing Cash Flow: This section shows cash movements related to funding activities, including loan repayments, dividend payments, issuing shares, or receiving new debt. It explains how the business finances its operations and expansion, making it a key part of a financial statement for a small business.
• Cash Outflows: Cash outflows represent all expenses and payments, such as operating costs, taxes, debt repayments, and capital expenditures. Monitoring outflows helps control spending and avoid cash shortages.

How to Calculate Cash Flow in Excel?

Step 1: Set Up Your Cash Flow Structure

Create a simple table in Excel with clear columns, such as:

• Date
• Cash Inflows (sales, payments received, investments)
• Cash Outflows (expenses, salaries, rent, utilities)

This structure ensures accurate tracking and easy calculations.

Step 2: Enter Cash Inflows

List all incoming cash amounts in the Cash Inflows column. These may include:

• Customer payments
• Loan proceeds
• Interest or investment income

Use one row per transaction or summarize by day, week, or month.

Step 3: Enter Cash Outflows

Record all outgoing cash in the Cash Outflows column, such as:

• Operating expenses
• Supplier payments
• Taxes and loan repayments

Ensure all values are positive numbers for consistency.

Step 4: Calculate Net Cash Flow

In a new column labeled Net Cash Flow, enter the formula:

= Cash Inflows – Cash Outflows

For example, if inflows are in cell B2 and outflows in C2, use:
=B2 – C2

Drag the formula down to calculate cash flow for all rows.

Step 5: Calculate Total Cash Flow

To calculate total cash flow for a period, use:

• Total Inflows: =SUM(B2:B10)
• Total Outflows: =SUM(C2:C10)
• Net Cash Flow: =SUM(D2:D10)

This provides a clear view of overall cash performance.

How to Choose the Right Cash Flow Chart Generator?

Charts make it easier to uncover hidden and high-level insights buried inside a Cash Flow Statement table. A well-designed Cash Flow Chart converts raw financial data into meaningful data visualization, helping you clearly understand your business’s financial position and make informed, data-driven decisions.

However, extracting these insights from traditional cash flow management is far from simple—especially when dealing with long, complex tables. On top of that, freemium tools like Excel offer limited built-in Excel charts, none of which are specifically designed to visualize cash inflows and outflows effectively.

The good news is that you can overcome these limitations by enhancing spreadsheets with advanced third-party data visualization tools. After testing numerous add-ons for Excel and Google Sheets, we found that ChartExpo is the most reliable Cash Flow Diagram generator for transforming financial data into clear, actionable visuals using advanced charts.

Keep reading to discover why ChartExpo is the preferred Cash Flow Chart solution for spreadsheet-based financial analysis.

Best Cash Flow Diagram Maker

As we said in the previous section, ChartExpo is the tool we recommend to our clients and readers. Why?

This super-easy-to-use tool does not require coding or programming skills, unlike other add-ons. More so, this Sankey Diagram and Cash Flow Diagram generator add-on for Google Sheets has an ultra-friendly UI that makes flow visualization easy for everyone to use. ChartExpo offers 50-plus advanced charts to offset the missing ones.

ChartExpo is the tool you need to produce Cash Flow Charts and perform Discounted Cash Flow analysis that are incredibly easy to read and understand. If you haven’t installed it yet, you can do so by clicking below for your preferred tool for Excel and start creating these charts in just a few clicks—no coding required.

How to Make a Cash Flow Chart in Excel?

Excel is one of the most popular data visualization tools around. Besides, it has been there for decades, which makes it familiar to many.

However, this spreadsheet tool has pretty basic diagrams, which are ill-suited to visualize Cash Flow Statements. You can supercharge this tool with the ChartExpo add-in to access easy-to-read and intuitive Cash Flow Charts.

Take a look at a Cash Flow Diagram example below to get started with the ChartExpo add-in for Excel.

We’ll use the tabular data below.

To get started with our Cash Flow generator, ChartExpo for Excel, follow the simple instructions below:

• Copy the table (above) into your Excel
• Open the worksheet and click on the Insert menu button.
• Click the My Apps option and then click the See All button.

• Click the ChartExpo button and then click the Insert button to start the installation.

• After this add-in is inserted, you will see the following list of charts.

• You can find the Sankey chart in the list, or search for it using the search bar, or click the Category button to browse chart categories.

• Once the Sankey Chart is clicked, you will see a new window where you can then you can select your sheet data and click on “Create Chart From Selection”.

• You will immediately see your data converted to a Sankey visualization.

• You can use the Edit Chart option to modify node colors, add headings, prefixes, and postfixes, resulting in a polished cash flow diagram with Sankey visualization.