Cash forecast

This playbook is the operating method Tarient uses to keep a thirteen-week cash forecast current. It is an operating standard, not a client case study. The point is a forecast a founder can still change on Tuesday—one that survives contact with the bank stack, not a motivational chart that drifts until the next scramble.

If Monday’s forecast and Friday’s bank account tell different stories, the forecast lost. Investigate before you forecast again.

Monday is the ritual day unless the company calendar forces Tuesday. The pair blocks the morning for cash, not for meetings that could have been notes. By early afternoon the week’s view is published with three callouts: trough, largest risk, and the decision that needs a founder answer. Mid-week noise does not rewrite the base case; it updates expected timing with a reason attached so the next Monday starts from truth, not folklore.

1. Import bank actuals. Clear timing differences. Never silently “adjust” without a note.
2. Roll the thirteen-week window forward. Drop the elapsed week into history; add a new week thirteen with disciplined assumptions, not copy-paste optimism.
3. Refresh AR collections by customer for the next four weeks. Anything that missed last week gets a reason and a new expected week.
4. Confirm payroll, rent, debt, and other fixed disbursements. Move discretionary vendor payments only after looking at the trough.
5. Reconcile the forecast’s beginning cash to the actual bank stack. If they disagree, stop and fix the bridge before editing future weeks.
6. Publish. Tag the founder on the single decision that matters this week, if any.

• Committed cash only in the base case
• Approved but unspent decisions in a separate layer
• Stress: delay the top one or two collections by two weeks and show the trough

When the month closes

Rebasing after monthly close is mandatory. Mid-month actuals keep the next few weeks honest; closed books keep the month’s story honest. Skipping the rebase is how forecasts drift into motivational literature. Soft-close labels belong on the cover if certification slipped; they do not belong as silent fudge in week three. The operating pack and the cash forecast must tell the same story about beginning cash, or neither is trustworthy.

Bank stacks that include reserves, restricted cash, or collateral accounts need labels. Treating restricted cash as operable cash is a classic board-facing error. The ritual includes a thirty-second check: what cash is actually usable this week? Seasonality belongs in the assumptions for week thirteen, not as a vibes adjustment to week two. If summer collections always slow, the base case should already know. If they do not, do not invent seasonality to make a chart pretty for a meeting.

Run the cash impact against the trough first. Early payment is sometimes a discount and sometimes a gift to the vendor’s cash position at your expense.

What if a large customer pays late? Update expected week, record the reason, and show the trough impact before anyone invents a heroic collection plan in Slack. If the delay is structural, change the base case, not just the commentary. What if the founder wants to prepay a vendor? See also vendor timing is a cash decision. Integration with AP batching means the forecast owner sees the proposed payment run before it leaves the bank. That single checkpoint prevents most self-inflicted troughs. If AP and forecast never meet, you do not have a cash process—you have two teams guessing past each other.

• Document the ritual so a backup analyst can run Monday without a folklore session
• Screenshots of the bank import path beat tribal knowledge
• Store ritual steps in Oversight beside the close calendar
• Keep the base case sacred when leadership wants scenario theater

Scenarios can fan out from a trusted base. They cannot replace it. Ten optimistic cases without a trusted base are entertainment. When leadership wants a hiring plan stress, build it from the same trough the operating forecast uses. Parallel universes of cash are how board meetings become archaeology. After a few clean cycles, Monday should feel boring. Boring is the goal. The founder should open the published view knowing the trough, the largest risk, and whether a decision is waiting—not hunting for which spreadsheet is current or which Slack thread holds the “real” number.

Service wrapper: cash forecasting. To install the ritual with a stable pair, contact Tarient.

Committed cash in the base case means signed decisions and known obligations, not aspirational pipeline. Approved but unspent decisions sit in a separate layer so founders can see what would move the trough if they pull the trigger. Stress cases delay the top collections on purpose and show the impact without rewriting the story the company actually runs. When a payroll calendar shifts or a debt covenant measurement approaches, those dates land in the ritual the week they become material—not after someone notices a miss in a board prep scramble.

The thirteen-week window is long enough to see hiring and vendor timing collide, and short enough that week thirteen still requires discipline instead of fantasy. Copy-paste optimism into week thirteen is how companies wake up surprised in week four. Tarient keeps the ritual boring so the founder’s decision hour is spent on tradeoffs, not on reconstructing which file is current.