A rolling 13-week forecast that shows the money coming in, the money going out, and the weeks where the two don't line up.
"We hit revenue targets, but where's the cash?" That question comes up more than any other, and the answer is almost never mysterious. Revenue and cash move on different clocks. You book the work in March, bill it in April, get paid in June, and pay your crew every two weeks the whole time. The profit is real. The timing is what hurts.
The tool that fixes this is a 13-week rolling cash flow forecast, and it's the centerpiece of how we work with Kentucky companies. Thirteen weeks is far enough out to see a problem while you still have options, and close enough in that the numbers mean something. Each week the forecast rolls forward: actuals replace estimates, a new week gets added at the back, and you see where you were wrong and why. That feedback loop is what makes it sharper over time.
It starts with your current cash position, then layers in what's genuinely expected to move. Customer receipts based on actual invoice terms and how those customers really pay, not how they're supposed to. Payroll on its real dates. Vendor payments, debt service, rent, insurance, taxes, owner draws. Anything lumpy gets its own line so it doesn't hide inside an average. The result is a week-by-week picture of your bank balance for the next quarter. When a week dips below where you're comfortable, you see it in advance and you have room to move: accelerate a collection, shift a payment, draw on the line, delay a purchase. Same problem, handled instead of survived.
Work happens on site in Lexington, Nicholasville, Georgetown, Versailles, Winchester, and Richmond, and virtually for companies in Louisville and London, and nationwide. The local piece matters more than people expect. Knowing which regional banks move quickly on a line increase, how construction retainage tends to run on area projects, and what a seasonal swing looks like in this market is the difference between a forecast built from your business and one built from a template. Sitting in the same room once a quarter with the people who actually know when the big receivable is landing tends to produce a better number than any spreadsheet exercise done at a distance.
The first thing most owners notice is that the anxiety drops. Not because the cash situation improved overnight, but because the unknown got smaller. You stop checking the bank balance every morning trying to guess. The second thing is that decisions get easier. Hiring, equipment, a new location, taking on a large job with a slow payer, all of it becomes a question you can test against the forecast before you commit. The third thing takes longer: the forecast starts revealing patterns. Which customers always pay late. Which months are structurally tight. Where the working capital is actually tied up. That's where the real fixes come from.
Short-term forecasting keeps you out of trouble. Longer-range modeling helps you decide where to go. Once the 13-week is running cleanly, it's straightforward to extend the thinking out to twelve or eighteen months and test scenarios: what happens to cash if revenue grows 30 percent, what a slow first quarter does to the line of credit, whether the business can fund an acquisition without outside money. Those longer models are only as good as the short-term discipline underneath them, which is why the 13-week comes first. Get the near term honest and the long term stops being guesswork.
Monthly projections hide the problem. A month can end fine on paper while the third week was tight enough to bounce something. Payroll, big vendor payments, and debt service all land on specific days, and cash trouble happens between month ends. Thirteen weeks gives you a full quarter of weekly detail, which is where the decisions actually live.
Yes, and unpredictable revenue is exactly where forecasting earns its keep. The forecast isn't a prediction you're graded on. It's a working model that gets adjusted every week as reality comes in. Companies with lumpy revenue benefit most, because the swings are visible ahead of time instead of arriving as a surprise.
Less than owners expect. Once the model is built and connected to your books, the weekly update is mostly mechanical, and your involvement is a short conversation about anything unusual coming: a big collection, a delayed job, an equipment purchase. Most of the work sits on our side. The value is in the review, not the data entry.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
An annual plan built from your history and your goals, broken down by month so it's something you can measure against.
Read moreWhere you landed against the plan, line by line, with the variances that matter explained rather than just highlighted in red.
Read moreA handful of numbers that genuinely drive your business, tracked over time. Not forty metrics on a screen nobody reads.
Read moreBook a consultation and we will map out a first step you can actually act on.
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