13-week cash flow plan: building it and keeping it up
Close to 70,000 businesses failed in France in 2025. Yet cash strain can often be seen several weeks ahead, provided you track it week by week. The simplest tool for that fits on a single sheet.
Author
Tudor HilcuFounder & CEO, THG Conseil
Published
Reading time
6 min
Topics
Cash, Crisis
Contents7
According to Altares’ annual review, 69,957 businesses failed in France in 2025, 3.1% more than in 2024. The Banque de France, which counts in its own way, records 68,564 for the year, 15.5% above the 2010 to 2019 average. Both sources land on the same order of magnitude: close to 70,000.
A business failure always has several causes. But the cash strain that comes before it can often be seen several weeks ahead, on one condition: you look at it week by week, not month by month. The tool that makes this possible fits on a single sheet: the 13-week cash flow plan.
Why thirteen weeks
Thirteen weeks is a quarter. It is short enough for the forecast to stay reliable: you know your customers, your open orders and your due dates. It is long enough to see VAT, loan repayments and large supplier payments coming, which do not fall every month.
Why weeks rather than months? Because a positive balance at the end of the month can hide an impossible week in the middle, the one where salaries and VAT go out before customers pay. The month-end statement does not show it; a weekly plan brings it to light.
It is the standard tool of restructuring professionals. Yet there is nothing about it reserved for large companies: an SME can keep it up on its own, with a spreadsheet.
Building it in half a day
Start from the actual balance of your bank accounts, this Monday. The bank balance, not the accounting one, with all the company’s accounts added together. It is the only line in the plan that is not a forecast.
Enter cash in week by week, on the date each customer actually pays. Not the invoice due date: the usual payment date, which your history gives you. One line per major customer, one line for all the others.
Enter cash out: salaries, social charges, VAT, rent, loans, suppliers. Rank them from the most binding to the most negotiable. On the day you have to choose, the order will already be set.
Work out each week’s closing balance and spot the first week that drops below your safety threshold. That threshold is the amount you do not want to go below. Set it yourself, with your accountant if needed.
Update the plan every Friday. Replace the forecast for the week just gone with the actuals, look at the gaps, add a week at the end. A plan nobody touches is wrong within two weeks.
Fictitious example, in round figures: opening balance €80,000, safety threshold set at €40,000
Week
In
Out
Balance
1
€30,000
€25,000
€85,000
2
€20,000
€45,000
€60,000
3
€15,000
€40,000
€35,000
4
€35,000
€20,000
€50,000
Low point: week 3
€35,000
At the end of the month, the balance looks fine: €50,000. But week 3, when VAT and a loan repayment fall due before customer payments arrive, drops below the threshold. That is the week the plan is there to show you, a month in advance.
What the plan lets you decide
The plan does not solve anything on its own: it gives you time to choose.
If a week turns red two months out, you still have choices: chase late payers, postpone a purchase, talk to your banker, ask for your tax and social security debts to be spread out, with your accountant. If it turns red next week, far fewer options remain, and they cost more.
The plan also helps you prepare those conversations. A banker reads a week-by-week table, with its assumptions written down, more readily than a worried phone call. And as soon as the situation touches on legal or accounting matters, decisions are taken with your lawyer and your accountant, and the plan gives them the figures they need to advise you.
What I learnt
For six years I ran a premium sports club in Paris. There I discovered the side of management you do not see in large groups: the payroll to pay every month, and cash you watch closely when the bank is slow to reply. In 2020 the club had to close overnight by government decision, and it held on.
For eight years I also ran programme budgets for major groups. The lesson is the same on both sides: a table that is not updated at the pace of decisions ends up being no use for deciding anything.
What the plan does not do
The 13-week plan is a forecast: it gets things wrong, which is why you correct it every Friday. It replaces neither your accounts, nor your accountant’s work, nor the procedures provided for by law when the situation calls for them. Legal and accounting questions are for your lawyer and your accountant.
Where to start this week
Write down the actual balance of your bank accounts on Monday morning.
List your ten largest expected receipts, with the date each customer actually pays.
Mark the dates of salaries, VAT and loan repayments over the next 13 weeks.
Three lists, and half the plan is done. The free template saves you starting from a blank sheet.
Watched week by week, cash leaves you time to choose.
