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13-Week Cash Flow Forecast Excel Template

About this template

Free 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast Excel workbook for short-term cash forecasting, scenario planning, cash runway, receivables and payable timing and minimum cash monitoring.

Stop finding out about a cash shortfall in the week it happens.

Most businesses already hold the data that predicts a cash squeeze. The problem is that it is scattered and nobody converts it into a weekly cash position.

Outstanding invoices may sit in your accounting system. Supplier bills could be in an aging report. Payroll, rent, loan repayments and BAS dates might live in a calendar or in somebody’s head. By the time the bank balance looks uncomfortable, the decisions that would have prevented it — chasing overdue debtors, delaying a stock order, drawing on a facility — needed to be made four weeks earlier.

The Smart Supply Hub 13-Week Cash Flow Command Centre turns your receivables, payable and fixed commitments into a week-by-week cash position across the next 13 weeks.

You provide the invoice and bill data you already have. The workbook calculates weekly receipts and payments, projects closing cash for every week, compares three scenarios and tells you the exact week your cash falls below your minimum acceptable balance.

What Is a 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast?

A 13-week cash flow forecast is a rolling short-term forecast that projects cash receipts and cash payments week by week over one quarter.

Instead of asking: “Do we have enough cash?”

You can answer: “Closing cash falls from $152,000 to $22,176 by Week 7 and breaches our $20,000 floor in Week 8, with a peak funding requirement of $33,600.”

Thirteen weeks is the standard horizon for short-term cash management because it is long enough to show a developing problem and short enough to be built from known commitments rather than assumptions. Every quarterly cost cycle — payroll runs, rent, BAS, superannuation, insurance renewals — appears at least once.

It is designed for finance managers, business owners, CFOs, financial controllers, operations managers and small to medium-sized businesses that need genuine cash visibility without a treasury management system.

What Does the 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast Measure?

The workbook produces eight headline cash metrics and a full weekly forecast beneath them.

1. Current Cash

Your opening bank position at the start of Week 1. This is the single input every projection builds from.

2. Forecast Cash

The projected closing cash position at the end of Week 13 under the selected scenario.

Forecast Cash = Opening Cash + Total Receipts − Total Payments (cumulative across 13 weeks)

3. Minimum Cash Position

The lowest closing cash balance reached at any point in the 13-week window, and the week it occurs.

This matters more than the closing position. A forecast that ends the quarter at $40,000 but passes through negative $60,000 in Week 9 is a forecast of insolvency, not comfort. Period-end figures routinely hide the trough.

4. Cash Runway

The number of full weeks cash remains above your defined minimum cash floor.

Cash Runway = Weeks until closing cash first falls below the minimum cash position

This converts a balance into a deadline. Seven weeks of runway is a date, and a date can be worked backwards from.

5. Receivables

Total outstanding customer invoices, with the count of open invoices.

6. Payables

Total outstanding supplier bills, with the count of bills awaiting payment.

7. Overdue Invoices

The value of receivables already past their due date, and how many invoices make up that figure.

Overdue debtors are the largest single lever in most short-term forecasts. The workbook treats them separately from current invoices because they behave differently — they need a recovery assumption, not a due date.

8. Expected Cash Shortfall

The peak funding requirement — how much additional cash would be needed to hold the minimum cash floor across the entire window.

Expected Cash Shortfall = Minimum Cash Floor − Minimum Cash Position

This is the number to take to a lender or an investor. It answers “how much?” rather than “are we in trouble?”

How Is the Weekly Forecast Calculated?

Each week follows a single structure, repeated 13 times:

Opening Cash + Collections from existing receivables + Cash sales and in-week collections + Collections from new sales (after credit lag) + Other income = Total Receipts − Supplier payments and stock purchases − Payroll and wages − Premises − Financing − Tax − Overheads = Total Payments = Net Cash Movement = Closing Cash → becomes next week’s Opening Cash

Receipts are not estimated as a lump sum. Every open invoice is allocated to the week it is expected to be collected, based on its due date plus a collection-delay assumption. Overdue invoices are recovered across the first three weeks using a configurable recovery profile, because overdue debt does not arrive all at once.

Payments work the same way. Each supplier bill is allocated to the week it falls due, and every recurring commitment — weekly payroll, four-weekly rent, quarterly BAS, annual insurance renewals — is scheduled from its next payment date and its own frequency.

This means a week showing a $211,000 outflow can be opened up and explained, line by line, against source records.

What Data Do You Need?

You don’t need a forecasting exercise, a budget or a management estimate. The workbook uses standard accounting data.

You need:

• Receivables: customer, invoice number, issue date, due date, amount
• Payables: supplier, bill number, issue date, due date, amount
• Recurring commitments: item, category, frequency, amount, next payment date
• Opening bank balance
• Minimum acceptable cash balance

If you can export an aged receivables and aged payable report from Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks or your ERP, you have everything required.

Supported workflow

1. Accounting System / ERP
2. Export Aged Receivables + Aged Payables
3. Paste into Excel
4. 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
5. Weekly Cash Position
6. Breach Week + Funding Requirement
7. Collections Push / Payment Deferral / Facility Draw

What Does the Excel Cash Flow Forecast Produce?

The workbook provides cash visibility at three levels.

Invoice and Commitment Level

Every receivable and payable is individually evaluated. The workbook calculates:

• Days overdue
• Ageing bucket
• Overdue status
• Expected collection or payment week
• Scheduled amount per week for each recurring commitment

This provides the audit trail. When a forecast week looks wrong, you can identify the specific invoices and commitments producing it rather than arguing with a total.

Weekly Forecast Level

Each of the 13 weeks receives a complete cash profile:

• Opening cash
• Collections from existing receivables
• Cash sales and in-week collections
• Collections from new sales
• Other income
• Total receipts
• Supplier payments and stock purchases
• Payroll, premises, financing, tax and overheads
• Total payments
• Net cash movement
• Closing cash
• Minimum cash breach flag

The breach flag turns red automatically on any week where closing cash falls below the floor, so the problem weeks are visible without reading the numbers.

Cash Flow Dashboard

The dashboard provides the management-level view:

• Current cash
• Forecast cash at Week 13
• Minimum cash position and the week it occurs
• Cash runway in weeks
• Receivables and open invoice count
• Payables and outstanding bill count
• Overdue invoices and count
• Expected cash shortfall

It also plots all three scenarios against the minimum cash floor on a single chart, so the point where the line crosses the threshold is visible immediately rather than inferred from a table.

Automatic Cash Alert

The workbook generates its own headline conclusion:

🔴 At current assumptions, cash falls below $20,000 in Week 8.

The alert is calculated, not typed. Change a collection assumption, a payment date or a scenario and the sentence rewrites itself — including flipping to a positive message when no breach occurs:

🟢 At current assumptions, cash stays above $20,000 for all 13 weeks. The low point is $85,571 in Week 9.

Scenario Planning

Three scenarios are calculated simultaneously and plotted together. A single selector switches which one drives the dashboard tiles and the alert.

The drivers are deliberately the ones you can actually influence. Collection delay and overdue recovery are debtor management. Supplier payment delay is a negotiation. Cost inflation is a purchasing decision. The scenarios are not optimism and pessimism — they are the consequences of specific actions.

Example: 13-Week Cash Flow Analysis

The workbook includes 37 sample customer invoices, 30 supplier bills and 11 recurring commitments across a business with $152,000 opening cash and a $20,000 minimum cash floor, so you can see the mechanics before entering your own data.

Base — breaches in Week 8 🔴

Cash climbs to $138,000 by Week 4 as the receivables book converts, then declines steadily as collections taper and ongoing stock purchases continue. Closing cash reaches $22,176 in Week 7 and $14,346 in Week 8, ending the quarter at negative $13,600.

Cash runway: 7 weeks. Peak funding requirement: $33,600.

The Week 4 peak is the trap. A business looking at its bank balance in Week 4 would conclude it was in a strong cash position. It was already eight weeks from a breach.

Best Case — no breach 🟢

Faster collections and a 90% overdue recovery rate hold the position throughout. The low point is $85,571 in Week 9 and the quarter closes at $87,031.

Cash runway: 13 weeks. No funding requirement.

The gap between Base and Best Case is almost entirely debtor behavior, not trading performance. Same sales, same costs — a different collections effort.

Worst Case — breaches in Week 1 🔴

Collections slow to 21 days beyond due date, overdue recovery falls to 45%, and cost inflation runs at 6%. The floor is breached immediately and cash reaches negative $205,874 by Week 13.

Peak funding requirement: $225,874.

This is the scenario worth taking seriously, because it is not a catastrophe scenario. Nothing extraordinary happens — customers simply pay three weeks later than agreed and costs rise 6%. Ordinary conditions produce a $226,000 hole.

When Should You Use a 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast?

Weekly Cash Management

Update it every Monday. The forecast becomes a rolling instrument rather than a one-off exercise, and the trend in breach week tells you whether your actions are working.

Facility and Funding Conversations

Lenders and investors respond to specific figures. “We need working capital support” is weak. “We require $33,600 to hold our minimum cash position, with the requirement peaking in Week 13” is a proposal with an amount and a date.

Collections Prioritisation

The forecast shows which overdue invoices matter and when. An invoice that arrives in Week 11 does not prevent a Week 8 breach. Chase the ones that land in time.

Payment and Purchasing Decisions

Test the actual cash effect before committing. Deferring a stock order, negotiating extended supplier terms or delaying a capital purchase can be modelled through the driver assumptions rather than guessed at.

Board and Management Reporting

Turn detailed invoice and commitment data into a small number of decision-grade figures:

Cash Runway: 7 weeks Minimum Cash Position: −$13,600 (Week 13) Expected Cash Shortfall: $33,600 Overdue Receivables: $139,350 across 11 invoices

This gives the board a position and a deadline without requiring them to review the ledger.

Why Use Excel for Cash Flow Forecasting?

You don’t need a treasury or cash forecasting platform to gain short-term cash visibility.

This workbook is built for businesses that already hold receivables, payable and commitment data but have no structured way to convert it into a weekly cash position.

Advantages

• No system integration required
• Uses existing aged receivables and payable data
• Automated weekly calculations
• Three-scenario comparison
• Calculated cash alert
• Configurable minimum cash floor
• Invoice-level audit trail
• Visual breach identification
• Configurable currency, units and start date
• Suitable for small and medium-sized businesses

Important Limitations

The workbook is a short-term cash forecasting and decision-support tool. It does not replace an accounting system, treasury management platform or cash flow financing facility.

Results depend entirely on the accuracy of the underlying receivables, payable and commitment data. A forecast built on an aged receivables report that hasn’t been reconciled will be confidently wrong.

The forecast projects cash, not profit. A business can be profitable and still breach its minimum cash position, which is precisely the situation this workbook exists to identify.

Businesses should configure the collection assumptions, payment terms, minimum cash floor and scenario drivers to reflect their own customer behavior and supplier agreements. The default assumptions are a starting point, not a benchmark.

Who Is This Cash Flow Forecast For?

This Excel cash flow forecast template is suitable for:

• Small businesses
• Medium-sized businesses
• Business owners
• Finance managers
• Financial controllers
• CFOs
• Bookkeepers
• Accountants
• Operations managers
• Manufacturing businesses
• Wholesalers
• Distributors
• Retail businesses
• Construction and trade businesses
• Seasonal businesses

It is particularly useful for businesses carrying significant receivables, working with extended customer payment terms, or managing a seasonal or lumpy cash cycle.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a 13-week cash flow forecast? A 13-week cash flow forecast is a rolling short-term forecast projecting weekly cash receipts, cash payments and closing cash position across one quarter, used to identify cash shortfalls before they occur.

Why 13 weeks rather than 12 weeks or three months? Thirteen weeks is exactly one quarter in weekly periods, so every quarterly commitment — BAS, superannuation, insurance, rent cycles — appears within the window without distorting the period lengths.

How do you calculate cash runway? Cash runway is the number of weeks closing cash remains above your minimum acceptable cash balance. In a 13-week forecast it is the number of full weeks before the first breach of that floor.

What is a minimum cash position? The minimum cash position is the lowest cash balance a business is prepared to operate with. It should reflect a genuine buffer against timing risk rather than zero.

Can I use this cash flow forecast with Xero or MYOB data? Yes. The workbook is built around standard aged receivables and aged payable reports, which can be exported from Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks or an ERP and pasted directly in.

Is this 13-week cash flow forecast template free? Yes. Smart Supply Hub provides this Excel cash flow forecast workbook as a free resource.

Can I change the currency? Yes. Currency code, symbol, units and the Week 1 start date are all configurable in the Settings sheet.

Can I model different scenarios? Yes. Three scenarios are calculated simultaneously with configurable drivers for collection timing, overdue recovery, sales growth, supplier payment terms and cost inflation.

Does this forecast profit or cash? Cash. Profitable businesses fail on cash timing, which is what this workbook is designed to expose.

Download the Free 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast

Turn your receivables and payable into a weekly cash position and find out which week your cash runs short.

Download the free Excel workbook and forecast using data you already have.

How to use it

Download the file, open it in Excel or Google Sheets, and replace the sample inputs with your own data — calculated fields update automatically. Cells you should edit are highlighted; everything else is formula-driven. If anything is unclear, contact us and we’ll point you in the right direction.