Your numbers
never arrives this period
Where it goes
Why the two numbers differ
Your CRM reports bookings. Your bank reports collected cash. Four things sit between them, and most forecasting tools model none of them.
Deals forecast for this quarter that close in the next. The single largest source of forecast error in most B2B teams, and the easiest to measure historically.
Deals that are signed and never paid — cancelled contracts, failed credit checks, voided policies, projects killed at kickoff. In lending and insurance this is structural, not exceptional.
Net 30, 45 or 60 means the revenue your CRM booked in March is cash you see in May. The booking and the cash belong to different quarters.
The share of invoices that miss their due date. Compounds with terms — Net 60 plus 30% late is a full quarter of displacement.
This model is deliberately simple: it applies each leak in sequence to your open pipeline. It will not match your finance system exactly. It is meant to show you the shape and size of a gap that most forecasts do not show at all. For the underlying reasoning, see sales forecasting by industry and attribution to paid invoices.