Glossary
13-week cash flow forecast
Also called thirteen week cash flow, 13 week cash flow, short-term cash flow forecast
A 13-week cash flow forecast is a week-by-week projection of cash in and cash out over the next quarter, used to manage a tight or uncertain cash position.
Thirteen weeks is one quarter. The horizon is a convention rather than a rule, and it survives because it is long enough to see a problem coming and short enough that the individual line items are still knowable: the invoices you have raised, the bills you have received, the payroll dates, the tax due.
Why weekly rather than monthly#
A monthly view can hide a crisis. If payroll leaves on the 28th and your largest receipt lands on the 30th, the month looks comfortable and the week does not. When cash is tight, the question is not whether you can afford the month, it is whether you can make it to Friday.
Where it is used#
It is standard practice in restructuring and turnaround work, and it is often the first thing a lender asks a struggling business to produce. Corporate treasury teams run one continuously as a matter of routine. It is a control instrument as much as a forecast.
Keeping it honest#
The discipline that makes it work is rolling it forward every week and comparing last week's forecast against what actually happened. The variance is the point. It tells you which of your assumptions about who pays when are wrong, which is information no single snapshot can give you.