Purchases. Lets say that you plan to have a big sale sometime during the year and need to buy extra merchandise for the sale. These extra purchases are above and beyond normal inventory replacement, so they wont be covered by the amounts you have written for purchases resulting from your cost of sales. Include those extra purchases here.     11.Other Cash Items. Here is where you place any cash receipt or expenditure that is not covered in the Profit and Loss Forecast or elsewhere in your Cash Flow Forecast. For example, perhaps you anticipate an investment in your business in a few months and you need to show the positive cash infusion. Or you might plan to buy a new piece of equipment sometime down the road. If your total is negative, make sure you put brackets around it. Otherwise, your Cash Flow Forecast will be incorrect.     12.Monthly Net Cash. Take a moment to review your work to make sure you have understood the cash flow effect of each of the entries and that they are all on the right lines. Make a final check to be sure that any negative numbers have brackets around them.     Then add and subtract the various entries on the Cash Flow Forecast form to derive the monthly net cash for each of the 24 months. Positive cash numbers represent additions to your bank account, while negative cash numbers represent money youll have to add to the business. Remember that numbers with brackets around them are subtracted from the total and that numbers without brackets are added to the total.     If the monthly cash flow figure is a negative figure, make sure you place a bracket around it. Do that as you complete each months calculations; otherwise, youll forget which numbers are positive and which are negative and youll have to do all the arithmetic again.     Year Total. Add up each of the rows (lines 1 through 13). Enter the yearly totals under the Year Total column. Check your arithmetic by seeing if the total monthly net cash figures add up to the same figure as your yearly total. If your answer is the same whether you add vertically or horizontally, your math is correct. If not, youve made a mistake somewhere.     WarningDont use line 13 to check your math; it wont work in the second and later years because those years start with a previous balance.     13.Cumulative Net Cash. This line shows how the monthly negative or positive monthly net cash numbers add across to derive the total cash required for working capital. Most businesses will show several months of negative cash flow followed by months of positive cash flow. By adding the monthly figures together, youll see the maximum negative cash-thats the amount youll need for working capital.     For month one, simply copy the net cash amount listed in line 12 for that month. To get month twos cumulative net cash, add together month ones cumulative net cash (line 13) and month twos net cash (line 12). For month three, add month twos cumulative net cash (line 13) to month threes net cash (line 12). Continue that process for the entire 24 months. Remember that when you add two negative numbers together, you get a larger negative number-you do not get a positive number.     Example: The M & M Copy Shop chart shows how to accumulate these figures. Note how the cumulative cash flow increases the negative amount when each individual months net cash flow is negative. Then, when the individual monthly figures turn positive, the cumulative negative figure becomes smaller as the positive cash flow reduces the cumulative negative figure. Finally, in the fifth month, the cumulative figure becomes a small positive. This means that the fourth and fifth