13-Week Cash Forecast for a Turnaround
The 13-week cash forecast is the first deliverable of a turnaround. What it should contain, who uses it, and how we build one in under two weeks.
In a Turnaround, Cash Is the Only Metric That Matters Until You Stabilize.
The 13-week cash forecast is the first real deliverable of every turnaround. Lenders expect it. Restructuring counsel needs it. DIP providers require it. Boards make decisions off it. A distressed business without one is operating blind — and no one on the outside will extend credit, patience, or capital until one exists.
The version most companies produce in-house is a monthly cash flow with weeks pasted across the top. That is not a 13-week forecast. It's a monthly budget in the wrong format. A real turnaround forecast is built bottom-up from receipts, disbursements, and obligations at line-item detail, refreshed every week against actuals, and defensible to the people whose decisions determine whether the business survives.
We build one in ten business days or fewer. Then we operate it — weekly refresh, variance analysis, lender package — for as long as the situation requires.
What Belongs In It
A Turnaround 13-Week Forecast Is Not a Monthly Budget in Weeks.
Six things distinguish a defensible turnaround forecast from a spreadsheet exercise.
Line-Level Receipts
Not “average weekly A/R.” Every open invoice, expected payment date, probability weighting where the customer relationship warrants it. The first thing a skeptical lender will do is test whether the receipt line is real. It has to be defensible name-by-name.
Prioritized Disbursements
Payroll and payroll taxes first. Secured obligations second. Insurance and utilities third. Trade payables categorized by criticality — who stops shipping if they don't get paid. Discretionary spend last. The prioritization framework is the actual triage tool leadership uses every week.
Weekly Rollforward & Variance
Beginning cash → receipts → disbursements → ending cash, week by week. Then last week's forecast vs. actual, with a written explanation of every variance over a threshold. Lenders don't punish variance. They punish variance you can't explain.
Liquidity Floor and Trigger Points
The minimum cash balance the business needs to keep operating without an event — missed payroll, bounced check, covenant trip. The forecast shows when the trough hits and how close it comes to the floor. That gap is the decision-forcing number for the week.
Scenario Overlays
Base, downside, and stress. What happens if the largest customer delays 30 days. What happens if the workout lender pulls the line. What happens if the tax authority levies. Scenarios turn the forecast from a prediction into a decision tool.
Reconciliation to the Bank
The forecast reconciles to actual bank balances weekly, not to a book cash number that may lag reality by weeks. Every stakeholder wants to see the same number the bank sees. Getting there is often the first accounting discipline a distressed business has to rebuild.
Who Actually Reads It.
Management. Not for planning — for triage. Which vendors get paid this week. Whether to defer the tax deposit. Whether payroll clears Friday. The forecast is the decision surface.
The workout group at the bank. Weekly package. If it's clean and honest, you buy time and credibility. If it's late, incomplete, or reconciles poorly to the bank statement, they escalate.
Restructuring counsel. Everything counsel does — forbearance negotiation, plan feasibility, DIP sizing — is built on the forecast. Bad forecast, bad advice.
DIP lender or bridge investor. The forecast is the loan document's financial exhibit. It has to survive their diligence.
Prospective buyers in a 363 or distressed sale. Cash burn and runway are the two questions every buyer asks first. The forecast answers them.
How We Build One Fast.
Days 1–3. Bank access, open A/R and A/P reports, payroll cadence, tax obligations, secured debt schedule, upcoming lease and insurance payments, contingent obligations. We pull what exists and note what doesn't.
Days 4–7. First draft. Line-level receipts, prioritized disbursements, rollforward mechanics, base scenario. Sit with the owner or CEO to walk it and pressure-test every assumption.
Days 8–10. Scenarios overlaid. Lender package formatted. First week's variance analysis approach agreed. Weekly refresh cadence set.
From there it's operated weekly. If the situation is fluid, we run daily rollforwards. If restructuring counsel or a DIP lender is involved, the forecast is delivered to them on their cadence, in their format.
Time Is Critical
If You Need a Forecast This Week, We Can Deploy This Week.
Every day without an accurate forecast is a day of decisions made blind. If a lender, restructuring counsel, or the board is asking for one and you don't have it, that gap gets more expensive every week it stays open. Call directly or send us a note about the situation.
Tell Us the Situation
Give Us a Few Sentences. We'll Respond Same Day.
Where the company is on cash, who the lender is, whether counsel is involved, and how quickly you need a forecast. That's enough to know whether we can help and how fast we can start.
Schedule a Discovery Call
We’ll reach out within one business day.