13-Week Cash Flow Forecast Template

What is a 13-Week Cash Flow?

A 13-week cash flow forecast lists what you expect to receive and pay each week for the next quarter, and shows the closing bank balance at the end of every week. Thirteen weeks is long enough to see a problem coming and short enough to forecast honestly. Its purpose is to mark the week you run out of money, which is a different question from whether you are profitable and a more urgent one.

Owner-managers use it when cash is tight, when a large receipt is late, or when a seasonal trough is approaching. Finance directors run it weekly as standard discipline. It becomes mandatory in a turnaround: lenders, invoice financiers and restructuring advisers usually require a rolling 13-week forecast as a condition of support, updated every week with actuals against forecast. Businesses with long payment terms, retentions, or a small number of large customers need it most, because one late payment moves the whole picture.

The timing of the statutory payments in the forecast is jurisdiction-specific and often the largest single item: VAT quarters and PAYE dates in the UK, GST and BAS cycles in Australia, GST returns and TDS deposit dates in India, payroll tax deposit schedules and estimated tax dates in the US, GST and HST filing periods in Canada. Get the actual due dates from your own filing calendar rather than assuming a pattern. Bank clearing times and cut-offs also vary, and a payment initiated on Friday afternoon may not leave until Monday.

This is a cash forecast, not a profit forecast. It ignores accruals, depreciation and revenue recognition entirely and cares only about money moving in and out of the account, so a profitable month can show a fall in cash and an unprofitable one a rise. It also does not decide anything: it shows the shortfall, but the response — a facility, a delayed payment, a conversation with a creditor — is a decision with consequences, and where insolvency is a possibility you should take professional advice quickly.

What to put in a 13-Week Cash Flow

These are the details this template asks for. Anything left blank is marked in red on the preview so you can see what is still missing.

How to write a 13-Week Cash Flow

1. Start from the actual bank balance

   Open with today's cleared balance across every account, not the balance in your accounting software, and not the available balance including an overdraft. Note uncleared items separately. If the forecast starts from a number that is wrong by a few thousand, every week after it is wrong by the same amount, and the week you run short moves without you noticing.

2. Build receipts from the debtor ledger

   Take each unpaid sales invoice, put it in the week the customer will actually pay rather than the week it is due, and use that customer's own history to decide. A client who has paid on day 52 for two years will not pay on day 30 because the invoice says so. Add expected new sales separately and conservatively, on their own line, so the assumption stays visible.

3. Schedule payments by their real dates

   Payroll on its exact date, rent on the quarter day, loan and lease direct debits on the day they leave, supplier payments in the week you intend to run the payment file, and tax on the filing dates from your calendar. Group them so the sheet reads: payroll, suppliers, tax, finance, other. Weekly totals hide nothing if the largest items each have their own line.

4. Close each week and carry the balance

   Every column ends with opening balance, total receipts, total payments, closing balance. Read the closing row across the thirteen weeks and mark the lowest point — that trough, not the closing figure at week thirteen, is what the forecast exists to find. If it goes below your facility limit in week seven, week seven is what you now plan around.

5. Roll it forward every week with actuals

   Each week, replace the forecast column with what actually happened, add a new week at the far end, and write down why each variance occurred. The variance column is the part that improves the forecast: after a month you know your receipts run a week later than you assume, and you can correct for it rather than being surprised in the same way every week.

Common mistakes

• Forecasting customer receipts on invoice terms rather than on how that customer has actually paid produces a forecast that is optimistic by exactly the length of your average overdue period.
• Omitting quarterly or annual payments such as VAT, insurance renewals or corporation tax makes the middle weeks look comfortable and the week they land catastrophic.
• Starting from the accounting system balance rather than the cleared bank balance imports every unpresented payment and uncleared receipt as though it were money you have.
• Building the forecast once and never updating it with actuals turns it into a document nobody trusts, and the first week it is wrong is the week it stops being read.
• Treating the overdraft limit as available cash disguises the point at which you are relying on a facility that can be reviewed or withdrawn.

Frequently asked questions

This page explains general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between countries and, in some cases, between states — check what applies where the document will be used.

Related templates

All templates · Finance templates