13-Week Cash Flow Forecast System

Most small businesses forecast cash on one sheet with one hopeful line, and the first warning is a returned cheque. This workbook builds the 13 weeks from the invoices and bills you actually have, shows what happens if customers pay late or suppliers tighten terms, and tells you which week cash falls under your minimum and by how much.

What is inside

• Settings: week 1 start (a Monday), opening bank balance, minimum cash, undrawn facility, number of closed weeks and a five-row scenario table (Base, Slow collection, Delayed supplier, Suppliers tighten terms and a case of your own).
• Receipts and Payments: up to 200 rows each, dated when you honestly expect the cash to move, including post-dated cheque clearing dates.
• Recurring: up to 40 repeating items such as payroll, rent, loan instalments, VAT return payments, insurance and retainers. Enter the next due date and the workbook repeats it.
• Forecast: the 13 weeks, week by week, from opening balance to closing balance, with the minimum-cash test on every week.
• Scenarios: collection delay in days, share never collected, supplier payment shift and a recurring-receipts scale, with all five cases side by side and a chart.
• Actuals: type last week's real receipts, real payments and real bank balance, then raise 'weeks closed' by one. Closed weeks use actuals, the next week opens on the real balance, and accuracy percentages show where your assumptions were too hopeful.
• Dashboard (two native charts) and a Checks sheet that confirms the lists tie to the forecast.

How it is deeper than the cheaper 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast template: that one is a single-case grid. This one adds the recurring-item engine, the five scenarios, the facility and minimum-cash logic and the weekly actual versus forecast roll-forward that keeps the forecast honest after week 1.

Facts and settings: figures are cash, so keep VAT inside invoice and bill amounts and enter your VAT return payment as a recurring row. The Instructions sheet notes the FTA guide timing for VAT returns and tells you to confirm your own period and date. Corporate tax is not modelled: add its payment date as a one-off recurring row.

What it is NOT: it is a calculation tool, not accounting, tax or legal advice. It is not connected to your bank or accounting system, it is not an FTA-approved system and it is not an e-invoicing tool (e-invoicing is on the Zeyto roadmap only). Where a rule matters it is a setting you enter, with a note to confirm it with the FTA, your accountant or your auditor.

Two workbooks: an EXAMPLE copy filled with invented data so you can see every sheet working, and a BLANK copy with the same formulas ready for your own data. Formulas only: no macros, no volatile functions, no add-ins. Input cells are coloured, formula sheets are protected without a password, and a Checks sheet turns green only when every list ties out.

How it was checked: the workbook was recalculated with an independent Python formula engine and 104 outputs (weekly balances, scenario results, alerts) were compared with a separate Python model, with no difference. There is no Excel or LibreOffice on the build machine, so it was not opened in them and the charts were not viewed on screen.

Limits: weekly buckets only (no daily view), the dates and amounts are the ones you enter, and it does not forecast sales for you.