A valid customer promise dated after a four-week forecast horizon should not be counted as expected cash inside those four weeks. Keep the invoice in open accounts receivable, preserve the promise as timing evidence, and schedule the right follow-up. The action queue and forecast total answer different questions: one tracks what finance must manage; the other estimates what may arrive within a defined period.
Record the promise before interpreting it
Oracle documents promise-to-pay records with a promised amount, promise date, status, and related transactions. It also distinguishes a promise from a fulfilled or broken outcome and reconciles the record after cash is applied. Those fields are useful even when the committed date falls outside the current forecast window.
Record the customer, invoice identifiers, committed amount, committed date, contact, source of the commitment, and current state. If one promise covers several invoices, allocate it explicitly or retain it as an unresolved account-level amount. The promise-to-pay tracking guide provides the base record.
Apply the horizon rule
Define the forecast cutoff once for the reporting cycle. If the committed date is later than that cutoff:
- include zero from the promise in weeks one through four;
- retain the invoice's open balance in the source reconciliation;
- label the timing as outside horizon rather than low confidence inside horizon;
- schedule a review before the promise date; and
- keep any nearer operational blocker visible.
Do not pull the amount into week four because the customer sounds reliable. Do not remove the invoice from the action queue because a later date exists. A four-week forecast can be internally consistent while a material balance remains just beyond it.
If the promise is changed to a date inside the horizon, update the dated evidence and allocate only the supported amount. If payment arrives, reconcile it to cash before marking the promise fulfilled. If the date passes without payment, use the broken-promise workflow rather than silently rolling the amount forward.
Preserve the decision trail
The minimum review row should show open amount, promised amount, promised date, horizon cutoff, included amount, owner, and next review date. This makes it clear why an important invoice can have a high action priority and a zero current-period forecast contribution.
The same boundary applies in reverse: an invoice due after the horizon may still belong inside the forecast if reliable evidence supports an earlier receipt. The current-invoice forecast guide explains why due-date status and collection timing are separate.
AR Pulse analyzes an authorized QuickBooks receivables export and produces a ranked cash-action list plus a four-week collections range. It does not contact customers or guarantee that a promise will be paid. Apply for AR Pulse when you need the action queue and cash horizon separated explicitly.