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What you'll take away
- Thirteen weeks, rolled forward every week. You're always looking three months ahead. Each week you add a new week at the far end, then go back and compare what actually happened against what you forecast so the errors teach you something.
- This is a cash model, not an accrual one. Your monthly business review is where you judge performance. This one exists to answer whether you run out of money, so build it on cash movements and keep the two separate.
- Forecast on how clients actually pay, not on what the contract says. If the terms say 30 days and they've paid at 60 for two years, model 60. Chase the 30 separately, as a collections conversation.
- One person owns the model. Not for hierarchy reasons: for version control and a name attached to the numbers.
- Be conservative on purpose. Build the buffers in from the start so that when things move, they mostly move in your favor.
- The forecast is only worth anything if it triggers action. Falling toward your minimum balance should set off a specific sequence you decided on in advance, not a meeting about what to do.
What the template actually looks like
Columns are weeks. Rows are your inflows and outflows. The difference between them each week gives you a running cash balance, and that balance is the whole point of the exercise.
Two things make it more than a grid. There's a variance column, so when you expected to add 10,000 in a given week and added 5,000, that 50% miss gets recorded rather than quietly forgotten. And there's an assumptions section, where "clients pay at 45 days" sits as a line you can go and change to 90 when reality says otherwise. Track the variances for a few months and your assumptions get noticeably better.
Alaan shared the template with attendees by email along with the recording and slides.
The levers, in both directions
On the way in: negotiate shorter payment terms up front, ask for payment in advance where the relationship allows, and offer a small discount for early payment when it doesn't. If invoices are stuck and the client is good for it, factoring lets you sell the receivable and take cash now at a cost. For consumer businesses, monthly or annual packages pull the money forward, and a discount to get it is often worth paying.
On the way out: payroll is fixed, though the timing on associated taxes and social insurance sometimes isn't. Push vendor terms as long as you can, and try to make them back to back with your own collections so a late customer doesn't come out of your pocket. Rent can often be split into installments. On debt, longer maturities, a grace period on principal, and a back-loaded schedule all buy room. And anything you can rent or subscribe to instead of buying outright smooths the curve, at least while cash is the thing you're optimizing for.
How much cash is enough
His answer for healthy: six months of expenses, less the revenue you're genuinely confident is coming in. If expenses are 100 a month and 40 of revenue is contracted and certain, you want 60 a month of cover.
For a more volatile business, stretch it. If income swings hard month to month, aim for nine or twelve months, because a stressed quarter will eat the difference and leave you at six anyway.
Then there's the test nobody enjoys running. If the company stopped today, would cash plus receivables plus anything liquid cover your payables, your final payroll, and every employee's end of service benefits? That's the line between a difficult situation and a genuinely ugly one, and he's seen enough companies cross it.
Where this model stops being useful
The 13 week forecast is a liquidity tool. It is not a good early warning system for the business going soft underneath you.
If your clients pay at 90 or 120 days, the cash landing in your account right now is payment for work you did months ago. You could be doing weak work today and the forecast would look fine, while the actual signal shows up as client complaints, low utilization, and churn. Those live in your weekly and monthly business review. Run both.
Questions from the room
What do I do about a receivable that's stuck? It depends entirely on leverage. If the client isn't critical and can't easily replace you, you can afford to be firm, up to threatening to pause service. If they're critical, go amicable: offer a discount for early payment, push for partial payment, or get written confirmation that they'll pay and take that to a factoring provider. There's also the option of working as a subcontractor to a company with a stronger balance sheet, which means giving up margin in exchange for someone else absorbing the delay.
What if I can't pay a vendor this month? Try to negotiate first, ideally offering more volume for more time. If you simply don't have it, understand the timeline you're dealing with: reminders, then a service cut, then their collections team, then an external lawyer, then a legal notice, then a court filing. That runs for months, and most companies resolve the underlying problem well before the end of it.
Two or three clients are most of my revenue. How do I manage that? First see whether you can genuinely diversify by country, sector, or customer type. If you can't reduce your reliance on them, increase theirs on you: strong account coverage, early warning on any dissatisfaction, and longer term contracts traded for a discount.
How accurate does the forecast need to be? That's a function of your tolerance, not a target percentage. Tight on cash means low tolerance for error, because being wrong ends you. Well capitalized means you can absorb more. Accuracy also degrades with distance, so next week should be close and week 13 won't be. The question worth asking is whether you're getting better over time.
How do I run sensitivities? Take your base case and stress the things that could break it: a major client paying late, a client lost entirely, an unforeseen legal claim, funding that arrives late. Rank them on probability and severity, and focus on anything high on either. Then write the contingency for each one now, so that if it happens you're executing a decision instead of making one.
What about currency exposure? A revenue and cost mismatch is only a cash problem when it's a real mismatch, so a reporting hit on translated earnings is a different conversation. Where you are exposed, try to match currencies, or at least mismatch toward the stronger one. Keep dollars in dollars until you actually need to spend them. Forward rates can inform longer horizons, though over 13 weeks you're mostly running sensitivities.
Payments get made outside the forecast on instruction. How do I stop that? With a governance model rather than a conversation. A delegation of authority schedule setting out what each role can approve, mirrored in your bank's authorized signatories, plus a rule that spend has to sit in a budget. If it isn't budgeted, it needs a business case, and if the case is good you add it to the budget.
Fixed or variable cost, does it matter here? Inside 13 weeks, yes. Payroll gives you almost no flexibility, since laying people off costs you their notice period plus severance, which comes to roughly the same cash as keeping them for three months. Freelancers and contractors cost more per hour and can be cut immediately. When you're volatile, buy the flexibility. When cash is comfortable, hire properly and take the lower rate.
Which AI tools do you use for this? He uses Claude with Excel and rates it highest at the moment, but says any of the major models will give you a decent result. The more useful move is connecting the forecast to whatever accounting system you already run so the actuals flow in each week.
The one thing to do this week
Don't try to build the whole thing at once. Take the template and spend one week just getting the structure right. The week after, put your first real numbers in. The week after that, start talking to the people who actually know when the cash is landing. It's the only version of this that survives past month two.
Watch the session
The full recording is above, and the Q&A is where most of the value sits. The template went out to attendees by email, so if it didn't reach you, ask us at support@alaanpay.com and we'll send it over.
