A simple 13-week cash view for small teams

Most small teams find out they have a cash problem about two weeks before it becomes a crisis. The profit-and-loss statement looks fine. The bank account does not. That gap is the whole reason a short-term cash forecast exists, and it is the one financial tool I'd hand to a founder before any other.

The 13-week cash view is a single sheet that answers one plain question: what will be in our bank account at the end of each of the next 13 weeks? Thirteen weeks is a quarter. It's long enough to see a payroll run, a quarterly tax payment, and a big customer invoice land, but short enough that you can actually predict the numbers instead of guessing.

It is not a budget and it is not your P&L. It only tracks cash actually moving in and out of the bank, on the date it moves. That distinction is what makes it useful. Below is how to build one, what to put in it, and how to read it when a real decision is on the table.

Start with the one number you can verify

Open a spreadsheet. Make 13 columns, one per week, labeled by the Friday date. The first cell that matters is your starting cash balance: the real number sitting in your bank account today, taken straight from the bank, not from your accounting software. They often disagree by a few thousand dollars because of payments that have not cleared, and the bank is the truth.

Each week then follows the same simple math: starting balance, plus money in, minus money out, equals ending balance. The ending balance of one week becomes the starting balance of the next. That's the entire engine. Everything else is just filling in the inflows and outflows.

The few line items that actually matter

Resist the urge to list 40 categories. A short-term cash view earns its keep by being fast to update, and detail you can't maintain is worse than no detail. For most teams under 50 people, eight to ten lines cover everything.

Group inflows and outflows into the handful that move real money on knowable dates:

• Inflows: customer payments you expect to collect (list named invoices, not a blended estimate), plus anything else landing — a tax refund, a loan draw, new investment.
• Payroll and contractor payments — usually your largest and most fixed outflow, so put it on the exact dates it runs.
• Rent, software subscriptions, and other recurring bills that hit on predictable days.
• Taxes — payroll taxes, sales tax remittances, estimated income tax. These are the line people forget, and they are large and non-negotiable.
• Loan or credit-card repayments, and any one-off purchase you already know is coming.

Forecast inflows like a skeptic

Outflows are easy because you mostly control them. Inflows are where forecasts go wrong, because hope creeps in. The fix is to forecast collections by name and by realistic date, not by invoice date.

Say a customer owes you $40,000 on net-30 terms and they have paid you late by about ten days every single time. Don't put $40,000 in the week the invoice is due. Put it in the week you actually expect the cash — three to six weeks out. If a payment is genuinely uncertain, leave it out entirely and treat it as upside. A forecast that only counts money you're confident about is a forecast you can trust when it's tight.

A tiny worked example

Imagine a team starting Week 1 with $80,000 in the bank. Payroll runs $30,000 every two weeks. Fixed overhead — rent, software, insurance — is about $12,000 a month, call it $3,000 a week. A $50,000 customer payment is expected, but based on history, in Week 5 rather than Week 3 when it's technically due.

Walk it forward. Week 1: $80,000 minus $30,000 payroll minus $3,000 equals $47,000. Week 2: minus $3,000 equals $44,000. Week 3: minus $30,000 payroll minus $3,000 equals $11,000. Week 4: minus $3,000 equals $8,000 — and there's the warning. You are one surprise away from missing payroll. Week 5 the $50,000 lands: $8,000 plus $50,000 minus $3,000 equals $55,000. Week 6 payroll: minus $30,000 minus $3,000 equals $22,000.

The model just told you something the P&L never would: even though this business is fundamentally fine over the quarter, it has a real squeeze in Week 4. That is the entire value. You saw it four weeks early, while you still have cheap, calm options.

How to actually use it to decide

A forecast you only look at is a diary. A forecast you act on is a tool. Three decisions it should drive directly:

Payroll and vendor timing. When you see a Week 4 dip like the one above, you have small moves available now: ask the slow-paying customer for an early partial payment, shift a discretionary vendor bill from Week 4 to Week 6, or delay a non-urgent purchase. Spotting it early means you negotiate from a position of choice, not panic.

Hiring. A new hire at $8,000 a month fully loaded isn't a P&L question, it's a cash question. Add the role to the model on its real start date and watch the lowest weekly balance — the trough — across the 13 weeks. If your lowest point stays comfortably above zero with a buffer, you can hire. If it dips into your safety cushion, the hire waits or the timing shifts.

Then keep it alive. Once a week, same 30 minutes, you do three things: reset the starting balance to today's real bank number, mark off what actually came in versus what you predicted, and roll a fresh Week 13 onto the end so you always see a full quarter ahead. The first build takes an afternoon. Every week after is about an hour, and it is the cheapest insurance a small team can buy.