13-Week Cash Flow Forecasting

Why profit and cash tell different stories

A profitable month can still be a difficult month for cash. Revenue is recognised when earned; cash arrives when customers pay. Inventory built for a strong quarter consumes cash before it produces any. Supplier terms, tax payments, capital expenditure and debt service all sit outside the margin line entirely.

The monthly P&L cannot show this, because the risk lives inside the month. A business can end March and April comfortably and still be short in the third week of April. The 13-week forecast exists because that is the horizon where cash problems are both visible and still fixable.

What Finviq provides

• A weekly cash forecast covering 13 weeks, built from receipts, payments, payroll, tax, capex and financing flows.
• Receivables and payables timing modelled from actual collection and payment behaviour rather than nominal terms.
• Inventory and working capital movements linked to the operating plan.
• Scenario testing: delayed collections, a slower month, a large order, a supplier tightening terms.
• Rolling weekly or fortnightly refresh with variance analysis against the previous forecast.
• A minimum-balance and headroom view so the trigger point for action is explicit.

How the forecast is built

The model starts from the opening bank position and layers in known and expected flows. Receipts come from the receivables ledger aged by expected collection behaviour, plus forecast new sales converted using the same behaviour. Payments come from the payables ledger, recurring cost commitments, payroll and statutory dates.

Once running, the discipline matters more than the model: each week the forecast is compared with what actually happened, differences are explained, and the assumptions are corrected. That loop is what makes a cash forecast trustworthy after a few cycles.

Decisions this service supports

• Whether to draw on a facility, and how much, before the week it is needed.
• Which supplier payments to schedule where, without damaging key relationships.
• Whether a large order can be funded through its working capital cycle.
• How much collections effort is worth applying to specific accounts, and when.
• Whether a planned capital purchase should proceed this quarter or next.

Who it is appropriate for

Businesses with meaningful inventory or receivables cycles, seasonal demand, tight facility headroom, or a lender that expects a rolling cash view. It is also valuable during any growth phase, because growth consumes cash before it returns it.

An illustrative example

A distributor with 45-day nominal terms may collect on an effective 62-day average. Modelling collections on nominal terms would show comfortable balances every week; modelling on actual behaviour could show a shortfall in week seven. The difference is not the business — it is the assumption.

Illustrative example · representative data.