A free tool from The Alinement Brief

The 13-Week Cash Forecast

Six rows, thirteen columns, no formula harder than addition. The point isn't prediction. It's lead time: knowing the week your cash gets tight while you still have decisions left.

The one rule

Record when money moves, not when revenue is earned.

Your profit and loss statement (the P&L) books the sale in the month you did the work. This books the cash in the week the payment clears. For a business paid in 45 days, that's a month and a half between the two, and an invoice sent late in a quarter collects its cash in the next one. Start from today's actual bank balance, not from your accounting system.

The build

Thirteen columns, one per week. Six rows.

  1. Starting cash. Week one is your real bank balance today. Every week after is the prior week's ending cash, the only link between columns.
  2. Cash in · customer receipts. Not sales. Collections. Place each open invoice from your receivables aging (who owes you and how long it has been outstanding) in the week you actually expect payment. Use observed behavior, not stated terms: a customer on 30-day terms who always pays at 45 goes in week seven, not week five. Add new work only where it's signed, deposited, or on a standing contract.
  3. Cash in · everything else. Loan draws, tax refunds, an owner contribution, proceeds from selling equipment. Short list, real money.
  4. Cash out · fixed and known. Payroll on its actual pay dates, with the payroll taxes that ride along. Rent. Loan and lease payments. Insurance premiums you pay monthly. Subscriptions. The quarterly estimated tax payment your accountant has already given you a date and amount for. This is the bulk of what leaves the account, and you already know nearly all of it. Fill it in first.
  5. Cash out · variable. Supplier and subcontractor payments (your payables, the bills you owe) in the week you'll actually pay. Materials for scheduled work. Owner draws, because leaving them off is how a forecast quietly lies to you. Then the lumpy one-offs: equipment, a deposit on a new location, and the insurance renewal if you pay it annually rather than monthly. Book insurance in one row or the other, never both.
  6. Ending cash. Starting, plus in, minus out. Carry it into the next column.

Read it correctly

The number that matters is the low point.

Not week thirteen's balance. The lowest ending balance anywhere in the quarter, and the week it lands in. A quarter that ends at $300,000 but dips to $9,000 in week nine is a quarter with one bad week in it. You now know its date.

Fill these in:

My cash low point: $______________  ·  lands in week ______

My floor (one payroll + one month of fixed costs): $______________

First week ending cash falls below the floor: week ______  (or: none projected)

The floor is the balance below which you genuinely cannot operate. Almost every owner has this number; in three decades of sitting with owners I have rarely seen one written down. Once both lines are on the page, the forecast has exactly one job: tell you early when the trough is heading for the floor.

Every Monday, twenty minutes

Built once it's a document. Built weekly it's a rhythm.

  1. Compare last week's forecast to what really happened. Do this first, before anything gets overwritten. The variance is the education: which customers pay later than they promise, which costs you underestimate, which weeks always run tighter than they look.
  2. Update the bank balance to today's actual.
  3. Roll it forward. Now drop the finished week and add a new week thirteen, so the horizon stays a full quarter out.

Your first forecast will be wrong. Every first forecast is. It's built on assumptions you've never tested. By the fourth, it is usually close enough to act on. Round to hundreds; precision isn't the point, direction and timing are.

Want a worked example? Download the sample forecast (Excel, 9 KB) for a fictional supply company whose quarter ends $147,600 higher than it started, and whose week 9 still drops below the floor. The rolling formulas are live: the totals, net cash flow, and each week's ending cash carrying into the next. The receipt and disbursement rows are that company's illustrative figures for you to type over. Sample data, illustrative only.

Part of an ongoing series of tools for the weekly operating rhythm. The full walkthrough is in Issue 11; why profitable businesses run out of money is Issue 4. Run it inside the 60-Minute Agenda, right after the scoreboard. Or browse every free tool.

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