IRR, NPV & MIRR Cash Flow Calculator

Enter each cash flow with its date: money invested as a negative amount, money received as a positive one. Add rows, or paste cash flows exported from planEASe. The results update as you go, for three timing methods side by side.

The NPV discount rate is the return you require. The MIRR safe rate and reinvestment rate are the two assumptions MIRR makes about money outside the deal. Samples loads worked examples, each with a short explanation of what to notice.

The same cash flows give different answers depending on when the calculation assumes each dollar moves.

• True Mid-Month treats each month’s cash as arriving in the middle of that month. Rent, reimbursements and expenses really do arrive throughout the month, so this is how planEASe has modeled property cash flows since 1982. The purchase is at the start and the sale at the exact end.
• Actual-Date discounts every cash flow from its exact date, the same method as Excel’s XIRR and XNPV. It suits payments made on precise dates, such as a bond’s coupons or a loan’s payments.
• Year-End totals each year’s cash flows on December 31, the way most financial calculators and many spreadsheets are used. It only works for whole years; see below.

NPV (net present value) converts every cash flow to today’s dollars at the rate you require, and adds them up. A positive NPV means the deal earns more than that rate; a negative one, less.

IRR (internal rate of return) is the rate at which the NPV is exactly zero — the rate at which the deal breaks even in today’s dollars. The chart on the Compare tab shows the NPV at every rate: where a line crosses zero is its IRR.

When the cash flows total zero or less, the investor gets back no more than was put in. Like planEASe desktop, the calculator reports this as Zero or Less rather than a negative rate — the NPV shows the result in dollars.

When cash flows change from negative to positive and back again, such as a large cost late in a deal, more than one rate can make the NPV zero. The calculator shows the lowest, as planEASe desktop does, and lists the others. None of them alone describes the deal; MIRR gives a single answer. See the example.

MIRR (modified internal rate of return) grows every dollar received at the reinvestment rate to the end of the deal, discounts every dollar invested at the safe rate back to the start, and finds the one rate that connects the two totals. That removes the ambiguity of multiple IRRs.

The price is that MIRR mixes the deal with your assumptions. A deal that only returns the money invested can still show a positive MIRR, earned entirely by the reinvestment rate. Always check which rate is producing the return. See the example.

Year-End only has an honest answer when the first cash flow falls on January 1 and the last on December 31: then every year’s cash has a natural place to go. A cash flow dated January 1 counts as the end of the prior year. When a deal starts or ends mid-year, or has a large cost mid-year, there is no honest place to put the cash, so the calculator explains what the cash flows would need instead of showing a misleading number.

For regular income over whole years, Year-End comes close to the accurate answers: see the single-tenant example.

• Subdivision Development: uneven cash flows, where the timing methods differ most.
• Be careful with MIRR: a positive MIRR on a deal that only returns the money invested.
• When IRR gives two answers: two rates make the NPV zero; MIRR gives one.
• A bond: IRR as yield to maturity.
• A lender’s yield: what two points do to a 6% loan.
• Single-tenant property, whole years: where Year-End works.

It measures the cash flows you enter. It does not build them: rents, expenses, financing, taxes and the sale are for you to work out — or for the full planEASe investment analysis, which projects them month by month and produces these measures before and after tax.

This calculator is a planning tool, not investment advice.