Skills / FP&A and reporting

13-Week Cash Forecast

A direct cash forecast is only as credible as its placement logic. Every dollar in AR, AP, payroll, and recurring items has to land in a specific week, or in an explicit catch-all for anything beyond the 13-week window, and the forecast has to prove that placement rather than just assert it. That's the gap between a forecast a CFO can defend and one that's quietly wrong the moment someone checks the arithmetic.

What it does

This skill builds a rolling 13-week direct cash forecast from AR aging, AP aging, the payroll calendar, current bank balances, a list of recurring items, and a collection-timing assumptions table that states, per aging bucket, what percentage of that bucket converts to cash in which week. Every input row lands in one of the 13 weeks or an explicit Beyond Horizon bucket, and the beginning balance plus the sum of all 13 weeks' net flows must equal the week-13 ending balance exactly before the workbook is produced. Once a week closes, the forecast reruns with that week's actual net flow supplied, and only weeks with a genuine actual on record show up on the Reforecast Variance tab.

The one rule it can't skip

It never invents a collection-timing assumption. Every aging bucket that appears in the AR file needs a matching row stating when the client itself expects that bucket to convert to cash, and that judgment is supplied, never defaulted to a standard terms-based assumption. The same discipline applies to discretionary decisions: whether to delay a vendor payment, which invoices to prioritize for collection, or draw on a line of credit are calls that belong to the CFO or Controller, and this skill forecasts from the obligations and timing assumptions it's given rather than extrapolating a decision from history.

How the placement actually runs

AR is spread across weeks according to the collection-timing assumption for its aging bucket, which can split a single bucket's cash across more than one week since the stated percentages don't have to sum to 100; whatever's left unaccounted for by week 13 is swept into Beyond Horizon with the shortfall shown. AP, payroll, and recurring items land in the week of their due date, pay date, or projected occurrence rather than the week they were incurred. A row that can't be placed, a receivable whose aging bucket has no matching assumption row, for instance, becomes a visible exception rather than a guess, and the beginning-balance-plus-net-flows-equals-ending-balance identity is checked explicitly every run, not assumed to hold because the inputs looked reasonable.

What it won't do

It won't infer a collection-timing assumption from a customer's past payment behavior; that judgment is supplied per bucket, not computed per customer. It won't decide which of several ways to close a projected cash gap is right, draw on a line of credit, delay a payment run, accelerate collections; it shows the gap and the week it's projected to appear, and the decision stays with whoever owns cash management. And it won't compare a week to an actual that was never supplied; a week missing from --actuals is left out of the Reforecast Variance tab entirely rather than shown as a zero variance it didn't earn.

Inputs and output

InputsAR aging, AP aging, the payroll calendar, recurring items, collection-timing assumptions by aging bucket, a beginning balance, and (for reforecasting) actual net flow per closed week
OutputA 13-week forecast workbook with every row traced to the week or Beyond Horizon bucket it was placed in, and a Reforecast Variance tab once actuals are supplied
Who it's forCFOs and Controllers who own the weekly cash forecast and reforecast cadence

Adopt's agents rebuild this forecast every week from the AR, AP, and payroll data you already keep current, place every dollar in a specific week or Beyond Horizon, and leave every discretionary cash call to you. Sign up free, or book a pilot to run it against your own 13 weeks.