13-Week Cash Flow Template

What is a 13-week cash flow forecast?

It is a weekly, direct-method forecast of cash in and cash out for the next quarter. Direct method means each line is a real payment on a real date: a customer's wire, a payroll run, a rent check. It does not start from profit and adjust it, the way a cash flow statement does.

Finance teams run it when cash matters more than profit for the next few months: a company burning cash between rounds, one with a loan that requires a minimum balance, one in a turnaround, or one whose collections are lumpy. A SaaS company is often lumpy by design. Annual contracts billed upfront bring in large payments in a few weeks of the year, while payroll leaves every two weeks. The forecast shows whether the two line up. For the concept behind it, see ORM's glossary entry on cash flow forecasting.

What is in the template, tab by tab

Most free 13-week templates are one grid with blank rows. This one fills the receipt and payroll rows from lists you already have, so the weekly update takes minutes, not an afternoon.

How do you build a 13-week cash flow forecast?

Start from the bank balance, list every expected receipt and payment by the week it will clear, and check each week's closing cash against your minimum. With the template, that is eight steps, and the first build takes longer than the weekly updates.

1. Set week 1. On the Inputs tab, enter this Monday as the week 1 start, opening cash from the bank (all accounts, not the ledger), your minimum cash line and the undrawn part of any credit line.
2. Paste the AR aging. Every open invoice with its amount and due date. The sheet works out days past due and the bucket, then applies that bucket's collection % and days to pay.
3. Fix the bucket table once. Replace the placeholder collection rates with your own: of last year's invoices that reached 31 to 60 days late, what share did you collect, and how long did it take?
4. List future billings and deals. Monthly billing runs, installments, renewal invoices and pipeline deals with a close date and probability. Pay date is invoice date plus terms plus your usual days late.
5. Set the payroll calendar. First pay date, frequency, net pay and taxes per run. The sheet places taxes on the deposit date, not the payday.
6. Paste open bills. On the AP tab, with due dates. Use the override column for any bill you plan to pay early or hold.
7. Type the lines with no list. Benefits, commissions, rent, debt service, sales tax, capex and one-time items, in the week they leave the bank.
8. Read the summary, then decide. Lowest cash week, weeks below minimum and the first week below it. If the first breach is week 11, you have ten weeks to act. Each Monday after that, fill in the Variance tab and roll forward.

Where SaaS receipts come from, week by week

Receipts are the hard half of the forecast, and in a subscription business they come from four places with very different reliability. Bookings and ARR are not cash. A deal signed and invoiced today on net 30 terms is cash in four to five weeks if the customer pays on time. ORM's comparison of billings vs cash collections explains why invoiced and banked dollars drift apart.

Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, makes two points that change how these rows behave:

• Renewals and new deals close on different clocks. Pete says renewals carry less uncertainty: "Generally, you know the amount" and "you know when it is going to close, the renewal date." In ORM's data, renewals usually close within about 30 days before or after the renewal date. New business timing depends on when the deal last changed stage. That is why the template keeps renewals on their own rows with their own probability.
• New business is back-loaded inside the quarter. ORM splits each quarter into 13 weekly seasonality weights for every customer. Pete's example: 0.70, 0.59, 0.63, 0.81, 0.96, 0.73, 0.60, 1.44, 0.84, 0.68, 1.27, 1.47, 2.27. By our arithmetic, the last three weeks carry 5.01 of the 12.99 total, about 39% of the quarter's bookings, against 23% if every week were equal. On net 30 terms, much of a quarter's new-business cash arrives in the first five or six weeks of the next quarter, which is exactly the window a 13-week forecast covers.

Pete adds a caution on renewal invoices: "If you send them an invoice 30 days before their renewal and never talk to them, you are putting that renewal at more risk." Invoice early if your terms allow it, but have someone talk to the customer first.

Disbursements start with payroll dates

Payroll is usually the largest and least movable payment, so the template schedules it by date. Net pay leaves on payday. Withheld and employer payroll taxes leave on the deposit date, which can fall in the next week. Under the IRS semiweekly schedule, taxes on wages paid Wednesday, Thursday or Friday are due by the following Wednesday, and on wages paid Saturday to Tuesday by the following Friday (IRS Publication 15). A monthly depositor pays by the 15th of the next month instead, so set the deposit lag to match your schedule.

Then look for the SaaS payments that a monthly average hides:

• Commissions on quarter-end bookings. If the quarter closes heavy in its last weeks, the commission run that pays for it is one of the largest of the year, and it lands in the next quarter.
• Annual prepaid contracts. Insurance, the CRM and other software renewals often bill once a year, frequently in January.
• Hosting true-ups and usage bills. Cloud bills for a heavy month arrive weeks later.
• Debt service and covenants. Interest and principal dates, and the minimum cash the lender requires, which becomes your minimum cash line.
• Annual bonuses and sales tax remittances. Dated, predictable, and easy to forget in a model built on monthly averages.

13-week cash flow example: a SaaS company from November to January

This is the worked example inside the example file. The company and every number are illustrative, made up to show the mechanics. Week 1 starts Monday, November 2. Opening cash is $2,350,000, the minimum cash line is $1,000,000 and $500,000 of the credit line is undrawn. Payroll runs every second Friday: $210,000 of net pay plus $95,000 of payroll taxes deposited the next Wednesday.

Cash falls $1,575,910 over the quarter. A monthly view would show three months of steady burn and a January ending balance under the line, but not which weeks or why. The weekly view shows four things:

• The first breach is week 11, not week 13. Week 11 carries a payroll run, $96,000 of commissions on December bookings, $68,000 of hosting and $15,000 of debt service, while only $28,000 comes in. The company has ten weeks of warning.
• The big January renewals land outside the window. Nine customers renew on January 1. Invoiced that day on net 30, with their usual 10 days late, $342,000 of expected cash (95% of $360,000) arrives February 10, in week 15. The Beyond week 13 column shows it, along with $82,500 of weighted pipeline.
• Old invoices are worth less than their face value. Open AR is $1,004,000. Weighted by bucket, the template expects $970,590. The $18,000 invoice that is 125 days past due counts as $7,200, in week 9.
• Weeks 6 and 9 are near-zero receipt weeks. $18,000 and $13,200 come in, and week 9 also carries rent, payroll, an $85,000 annual CRM renewal and the year-end holiday.

The fix the example tests: invoice the January 1 renewal batch on December 1 instead, after customer success has spoken to each account. At the same terms and days late, the $342,000 arrives January 10, in week 10. Closing cash then stays above $1,000,000 in every week, with a low of $1,116,090 in week 13. A second option is to draw $250,000 on the credit line before week 11. The template shows both: closing cash and liquidity (cash plus the undrawn line) sit on separate rows.

The 13-week cash flow formulas, in Excel and Google Sheets

Every formula uses functions both apps share. References are from the template; Inputs!$B$4 is the week 1 start date. Examples come from the worked example.

Row 38 is a helper that returns the week number when the cushion is negative and 99 when it is not, which keeps the formula free of array functions. Blank rows return zero, so the blank file shows a clean grid instead of errors.

How weekly variance makes the forecast better

A 13-week forecast earns trust by being compared with what happened, every week. The Variance tab does it twice. First, last week's forecast against actuals for the week that just ended, line by line, with the effect on cash. Second, last week's version against this one for the 12 weeks both cover, which feeds the Change vs last week's version column on the main grid.

In the example, collections for the week that ended came in $48,000 short (one customer paid late), the contractor bill ran $7,000 over, and $4,000 of bank fees appeared, a $59,000 hit to cash. In the new version the late $48,000 moves into weeks 2 to 4, a pipeline deal slips out of the window (-$60,000) and $150,000 of annual bonuses enters week 12. Each change gets one line of explanation. For the method behind it, see ORM's guide to variance analysis.

13-week cash flow vs a monthly forecast vs runway

They answer different questions, and most finance teams need all three. The 13-week forecast is for liquidity this quarter. A monthly forecast plans the next one to two years. Runway tells you how long the cash lasts if nothing changes.

Use them together. For the monthly view of the next 24 months, use the cash flow forecast template; this file covers only the next quarter, week by week. The 13-week forecast's week 13 closing cash is a good check on the first quarter of your longer plan. If the two disagree by more than one large invoice, one of them has a wrong assumption.

What Pete Furseth checks in any forecast he puts in front of a board

• Consistent and traceable. "If you show one number on one slide, that number better show up on the next, or there should be a clear explanation for why it changed." Every receipt in the template traces back to an invoice, a contract, a deal or a payroll date.
• A range, not one number. Pete wants a low case, an on-target case and an upper bound. In a cash forecast, that means a version with the pipeline at zero and late payers later, next to the base case.
• Tell people early. "Bad news doesn't get better with time." A minimum cash breach in week 11 is a conversation with the board and the lender in week 1.

Common 13-week cash flow mistakes

• Forecasting from revenue or bookings. Recognized revenue is spread over the contract. Cash arrives when the invoice is paid.
• Counting AR at face value. An invoice 120 days past due is not worth its full amount, and it will not arrive on its due date.
• Putting payroll taxes on payday. They clear on the deposit date, which can be the following week.
• Weekly averages for monthly and annual payments. Rent, benefits and annual renewals leave in one week, not spread across four.
• Opening cash from the ledger. Use the bank balance. Uncleared checks and pending transfers make the ledger look better than the bank.
• No variance and no history. If you overwrite last week's file, you cannot see which lines you keep getting wrong.

ORM's take on SaaS receipts and the pipeline

The AR aging covers the first few weeks of a 13-week forecast. After that, cash depends on renewals that have not been invoiced and deals that have not closed. Those rows are only as good as the close dates and probabilities behind them, and most spreadsheets get them from the CRM's stage percentages.

ORM forecasts new, expansion and renewal revenue by week from your own CRM history, including how back-loaded your quarters are and how renewals close around their dates. Finance can feed those weekly expectations into the billings and pipeline rows instead of guessing. ORM targets 95% forecast accuracy on the forecasts it builds.

Common questions

What does a 13 week cashflow forecast look like?

It is a grid with 13 weekly columns, Monday to Sunday, and rows for cash in and cash out. It starts with opening cash from the bank, lists receipts (collections, billings, other) and disbursements (payroll, rent, vendors, debt service, taxes), then shows net cash flow and closing cash for each week. Each closing balance becomes the next week's opening balance, and a minimum cash line flags the weeks that fall short.

How do I calculate a cash flow forecast?

Start with the cash in the bank today. For each future period, add the cash you expect to receive and subtract the cash you expect to pay, by the date it will actually move, not the date it is earned or billed. The result is closing cash, which becomes the next period's opening cash. In a 13-week forecast the period is one week.

How do I calculate projected cash flow?

Projected cash flow for a period is expected receipts minus expected disbursements. Build receipts from open invoices weighted by how reliably each aging bucket pays, plus new invoices and weighted deals. Build disbursements from payroll dates, bills due and fixed payments. The direct method on this page lists each cash line. The indirect method starts from net income and adjusts it, which suits monthly or annual views.

How do I figure out my cash flow?

For a past period, take your bank statements: total cash in minus total cash out equals net cash flow, and it should equal the change in your bank balance. If it does not, a transfer or a payment is missing. For the future, list expected receipts and payments by week, as the template does, and check each week against the minimum cash you need to hold.

Why use 13 weeks and not a month or a year?

Thirteen weeks is one quarter, so the forecast always reaches the next quarter end. It is short enough to forecast each payment by date and long enough to give you time to act: draw a credit line, move a bill, chase a large invoice or change hiring. A monthly forecast hides the payroll week that dips below your minimum, and a yearly one cannot see it at all.

How often should you update a 13-week cash flow forecast?

Every week, on the same day, usually Monday. Replace opening cash with the real bank balance, compare last week's forecast with what happened, then drop the week that ended and add a new week 13. Keep last week's file. Comparing the two versions shows which lines keep moving, and that is where the forecast needs better inputs.

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