| Week | Beginning | Receipts | Wages | Rent | Vendors | Royalties | Marketing | Taxes | Debt | Owner Draw | Ending |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 2 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 3 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 4 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 5 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 6 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 7 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 8 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 9 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 10 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 11 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 12 | $0 | $0 | |||||||||
| Week 13 | $0 | $0 |
Enter your expected receipts and outflows for each week. Beginning and ending cash calculate automatically, carrying the balance forward. Nothing is saved.
Where to next
Want the books off your plate?
Book a short call, and we'll give you an expert view of your situation.
Free Consult →What this tool does
Start with cash on hand, then lay in receipts and payments week by week for thirteen weeks. The forecast returns the weekly closing balance and shows the week the balance goes negative.
How to read the result
- Thirteen weeks is the horizon where you can still act. Beyond that it is a budget, not a forecast.
- Royalty and brand fund fees come off gross sales on the brand's schedule, not yours, so they land whether the week was good or not.
- Wages are the line that breaks a week. Map the actual pay dates, including the months with three pay runs.
- Update it weekly with actuals. A forecast that is never corrected teaches you nothing about your own bias.
Questions we get asked
Why weekly and not monthly?
Because rent, wages and fees do not arrive evenly within a month. A month that ends fine can still contain a week where the balance goes below zero.
What do I do when the model shows a negative week?
You have options while it is eight weeks away: slow a payment, accelerate a deposit, draw on a line, or delay a hire. You have none of them in the week itself.
Does this replace the close?
No. The forecast is only as good as the last close it started from.
Want this handled? Averan does the bookkeeping for franchise owners and multi-unit operators.
Planning another location? Fractional CFO covers the forecast and the cash plan behind it.
What this measures
A profit and loss statement tells you what a month earned. It does not tell you whether you can make payroll in week six. This forecast maps the next thirteen weeks of money in and money out, week by week.
Thirteen weeks is one quarter. It is long enough to see a problem while you can still do something about it, and short enough that you can forecast it honestly.
What to put in
- Start with the cash in the bank today.
- Sales you expect each week, not each month.
- Payroll dates, which rarely line up with sales.
- Rent, royalty and ad fund, on the dates they actually leave.
- Loan payments, tax payments and anything annual that lands inside the quarter.
- Anything you have already committed to buy.
How to read the answer
The lowest point matters more than the ending balance. A forecast that ends fine but dips below zero in week nine is a forecast of a missed payroll.
If the dip is two weeks long, it is a timing problem and can be managed. If it gets deeper every week, it is a profitability problem and no amount of scheduling fixes it.
Lenders typically want six to twelve months of operating expenses in reserve for each new location.
In the library, 132 of the 431 brands publish how a new location builds up in its first year. The rest leave the ramp for the owner to assume.
Where it usually goes wrong
- A common mistake is forecasting sales monthly and dividing by four. Payroll does not arrive in quarters.
- Leaving out the annual bills that happen to fall inside the window.
- Assuming receivables arrive on the day they are due.
- Another is building it once and never updating it. It is worth twenty minutes every Monday and nothing at all if it sits still.
Questions this raises
- How much cash does a new location burn before break-even?
- What should I watch every week?
- At what point do spreadsheets stop coping?
- Do I need a bookkeeper, a controller or a CFO?
Keeping this current every week is what a controller does. If the books are behind, start with catch-up bookkeeping.
If you want this done for you
What happens next
Reading about it and having it done are different things. Here is exactly what happens if you want the second one.
- The call takes thirty minutesYou describe the business and where the numbers are letting you down. We give you an expert view of your situation, and what we would start with. There is no pitch deck.
- We look at the fileYou give us read access to the books as they are. We come back with what is wrong, what it will take to fix, and whether the answer is bookkeeping, controller work, or something else.
- We send a written scope and a priceIt lists what we do each month, what you get, the date it lands and the fee. We agree it before anything starts, and it does not change unless you agree.
- We take over the books and close the first monthWe set up access and systems and enter the opening balances. The first close lands on the date in the scope, and every one after it does too.