13-Week Cash Flow Forecast Template

A monthly cash flow can look comfortable while one week in the middle of it does not. Payroll, rent and a tax payment can land in the same seven days, and a monthly total hides that until it is too late to do anything about it.

This template forecasts cash one week at a time for the next 13 weeks. You paste in your open customer invoices and unpaid supplier bills, list your regular payments once, and it places every amount in the week it is expected. It then gives you the closing balance for each week, the headroom above your minimum cash floor, and the first week that floor would be breached.

Before relying on it, stress-test it: push every receipt later by a number of days, or cut the sales you have not yet invoiced, and see whether your headroom survives. Each week you log the forecast against what actually happened and roll the forecast forward, so it is always anchored to today’s bank balance and gets more accurate over time.

What you get

• Weekly forecast for 13 weeks: receipts, operating payments, financing, net cash flow, opening and closing cash
• Customer invoices placed by expected receipt date, or by due date plus your ‘customers pay late by’ allowance
• Supplier bills placed by planned payment date or due date; overdue bills fall into week 1
• Recurring payments entered once — weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or one-off, with optional end dates
• Minimum cash floor, headroom with and without your overdraft facility, and a week-by-week status
• Dashboard: lowest balance, its week, first week below the floor, weeks of warning, and a closing-cash chart
• Stress test on Setup: receipts N days later and/or a % cut in uninvoiced sales, clearly flagged while active
• Variance Log for the rolling method: forecast vs actual receipts, payments and closing cash each week, accuracy over all weeks and the last four
• Thirteen plain-English checks, including proof that every open invoice and bill is accounted for

Sheets in the workbook

• Instructions — How to use the file, colour key, assumptions and limitations.
• Setup — Start date, opening cash, minimum cash floor, customer delay, facility and the stress test.
• Receivables — Open customer invoices and when you expect to be paid.
• Payables — Unpaid supplier bills and when you plan to pay them.
• Recurring — Regular payments, placed automatically into the correct weeks.
• Other Flows — Week-by-week inputs for everything else.
• Forecast — The 13-week cash forecast with closing balance and headroom.
• Dashboard — Lowest balance, first breach of the floor, and the chart.
• Variance Log — Rolling log of forecast vs actual for every closed week, with accuracy over all weeks and the last four.
• Checks — Plain-English checks that every invoice and bill is accounted for.
• Notes & Tests — How each key result is calculated, and test scenarios you can run yourself.

Who it is for

Business owners, finance managers and bookkeepers in growing, seasonal or tight-cash businesses; accountants preparing a short-term cash forecast for a client or lender.

Practical uses

• Spotting a payroll or tax week that would take the account below its safe minimum
• Deciding which supplier payments to delay, or which customers to chase first
• Showing a bank or investor a credible short-term forecast
• Weekly cash meeting: close last week, roll forward one week

In the download

• BabaDigit_13_Week_Cash_Flow_Forecast.xlsx — 11 sheets
• README with the full usage guide
• Licence (own business and client use)
• Worked sample data for a fictional business, clearly labelled

Requirements

• Microsoft Excel 2016 or later, or Microsoft 365
• Also opens in LibreOffice Calc; Google Sheets and Apple Numbers import not yet tested
• No macros, no add-ins, no internet connection required

Please read

• Sample data for a fictional business is included and clearly labelled.
• Taxes are entered as amounts you will pay; the template does not calculate any country’s tax.
• It does not connect to your bank or accounting software.
• This is a tool, not financial, accounting, tax or legal advice.