The 13-Week Cash Flow That Actually Gets Used: Your "Oh Shit, Where's My Money?" Insurance Policy
The 13-Week Cash Flow That Actually Gets Used: Your "Oh Shit, Where's My Money?" Insurance Policy
For Service Business CEOs Who'd Rather Count Profits Than Sheep
Executive Summary
Most cash flow forecasts are like gym memberships - expensive, complicated, and abandoned by February. They're built by finance people for finance people, which is why they gather digital dust while you're over here refreshing your bank balance like it's social media.
Here's the truth: You don't need a PhD in spreadsheets to know if you can make payroll in six weeks. You need a stupidly simple system that takes 30 minutes a week and actually tells you what to DO when the numbers look scary.
This playbook gives CEOs of £1m-£10m service businesses a cash flow forecast that your entire team can understand, update, and - here's the crazy part - actually use to make decisions.
We're talking about cutting your "holy crap, will we have money?" anxiety by 90% while getting people to pay you faster and knowing exactly when you can afford that new hire (or that holiday).
Who This Is For
CEOs of service businesses (agencies, consultancies, recruitment firms) with fewer than 50 people who want to sleep better at night without hiring a full C-suite to help you. If you've ever found yourself doing mental arithmetic on invoices at 2am, this is your intervention.
The Problem: Why Your Current "System" Sucks
Let's be honest about why you don't have a proper cash flow forecast:
• It's built for accountants, not humans. Your current spreadsheet has more tabs than a browser belonging to someone with ADHD. Nobody understands it, so nobody uses it.
• It shows you problems but not solutions. Great, Week 6 looks like a financial apocalypse. Now what? The forecast sits there like a smoke alarm with no fire extinguisher.
• It updates when Mercury is in retrograde. Cash moves daily, your forecast updates monthly (if you're lucky), and by the time you see a problem, it's already camping in your bank account.
• Numbers make your brain hurt. You started this business to deliver brilliant work, not to become a human calculator. The shame spiral of "I should understand this but I don't" means you avoid it entirely.
• You've survived this long without one. Until that month when three big clients paid late and you had to choose between payroll and rent. Fun times.
The Solution That Actually Works
Stop trying to build NASA's mission control when you need a dashboard that a hungover intern could understand on Monday morning.
Here's what we're building: A one-page, weekly 13-week cash forecast with exactly five inputs that your delivery team can update, your sales team can influence, and you can use to make actual decisions. No PhD required.
The Magic Ingredients:
Simple enough that everyone gets it
Red and green weeks so you know when to panic (and when to book that weekend away)
A "panic button playbook" - actual things to DO when money gets tight (we call them CFF Levers)
A Monday huddle that produces decisions, not just anxiety
Quality controls so you trust the numbers enough to act on them
Section 1: Build Your Minimal Viable Cash Flow
Think of this as your business's vital signs monitor. You don't need to know how the heart works to know if it's beating.
The Structure (Or: How to Make Numbers Less Terrifying)
(If this section makes you want to cry, scroll past, I have a CFF template you can use!)
Opening cash (whatever you had in your bank account last week)
Cash IN:
- Collections from existing invoices
- New money from new work
- Other random money (refunds, loans, finding £20 in old jeans)
Cash OUT:
- Payroll (the non-negotiable one)
- Contractors and consultants
- Bills you actually have to pay
- Commissions
- Marketing (the "investment in growth" stuff)
- Software subscriptions (seriously, audit these - you're probably paying for 17 things you forgot about)
- Taxes (death, taxes, and clients asking for "just a small change")
- Everything else
Net cash = What's left
Closing cash = What you'll have in your bank account
The Rules That Keep You Sane:
• Weekly, not daily. Daily forecasting is like checking your weight every hour - it'll drive you mental and tell you nothing useful.
• Split your money owed by age. Current invoices, stuff that's 30+ days late, stuff that's 60+ days late (and probably needs a lawyer).
• Split your bills into "must pay" and "flexible." Payroll = must pay. That fancy new software = maybe next month.
Who Owns What (Because Someone Has To):
Money owed to you: Your collections person
Bills to pay: Your finance person
Payroll calendar: Also your finance person
New money coming in: Your delivery and sales teams
Your Safety Net:
Keep at least 1.5× monthly payroll in the bank (ideally we want to get you to 3 months of costs)
If an invoice goes 14+ days overdue with no payment plan, stop work
Any payment over £5k needs two people to approve it when cash is tight
Section 2: The Panic Button Playbook (AKA The Lever Log)
This is where the magic happens. Instead of staring at a cash shortfall like it's a particularly depressing piece of modern art, you get a menu of things to actually DO about it.
Your Cash Flow Rescue Kit:
Collections (Getting Money That's Already Yours):
Call your top 15 overdue accounts (yes, actually pick up the phone, let’s go human to human)
Get the CEO to call their CEO (amazing how quickly this works)
Offer payment plans (some money is better than no money)
Billing Tricks (Getting Money Faster):
Split big projects into smaller milestones
Bill for work that's 80% done instead of waiting for 100%
Invoice immediately when hitting any milestone
Terms That Actually Favor You:
50% upfront on fixed-price work
Payment within 7 days, not 30
Late fees that sting
Monthly retainers paid on the 1st for that month's work
Pricing Fixes (Stop Leaving Money on the Table):
No more discounts without CEO approval
Actually charge your rate card
Upsell to higher-value packages
Smart Timing:
Push some supplier payments back (terms are for a reason, they'll survive if you pay them on their 30 day terms and not 7 days because you like their free pens)
Pull deposits forward from almost-closed deals
Turn verbal agreements into signed contracts with a small incentive
Each move gets an owner, an expected cash impact, and a deadline. No wishy-washy "we should probably do this sometime" nonsense.
How to Pick Your Battles:
Score each option 1-5 on:
Impact in the next 30 days
Certainty it'll actually work
Risk to important relationships
Do the top 5. Ignore the rest until these are done.
Section 3: The Monday Cash Huddle (30 Minutes That Save Your Sanity)
Every Monday, same time, same people, same agenda. This isn't a casual catch-up - it's mission control for your money.
Who Shows Up:
CEO, finance person, delivery lead, sales lead. If you don't have all these roles, wear multiple hats and talk to yourself. We won't judge.
The 30-Minute Agenda:
5 minutes: What did we predict vs. what actually happened last week?
10 minutes: Walk through the next 6 weeks - any scary red zones?
15 minutes: Pick your panic button moves and assign owners
5 minutes: Who's doing what by when? Write it down.
5 minutes: Any risks we need to manage or communicate?
The Golden Rules:
No dwelling on past mistakes (what's done is done)
Every number has an owner and a next step
Changes to the forecast happen before the meeting ends
Decisions get made, not deferred
Section 4: Making Your Forecast Actually Accurate (±15% in 6-8 Weeks)
A forecast that's wrong by 50% is just expensive fiction. Here's how to get yours reliably close:
The Weekly Accuracy Check:
Compare what people said they'd pay vs. what actually hit your account
Match your "new billings" to actual signed contracts (not wishful thinking)
Clean up your sales pipeline - not everything is "definitely closing next month"
Publish accuracy scores weekly (a little public accountability works wonders)
Section 5: The Cash Accelerants (Make More Money Faster)
While you're fixing your cash flow, might as well fix the things that put money in it:
Pricing That Doesn't Suck:
Rate card with no secret discounts
Standard contracts with change order clauses
Minimum billing increments (no 15-minute charges)
Utilisation That Makes Sense:
Daily time tracking (end of day, no exceptions)
Weekly lockdown of timesheets
Utilisation targets by role
Scope That Stays Put:
Productised discovery phases (2 weeks, 50% upfront)
Implementation blocks instead of infinite revisions
Change orders for anything outside the original scope
Terms That Favour You:
Upfront payments where possible
Automatic billing and collection
Direct debits for recurring work
Conclusion: From Cash Anxiety to Cash Confidence
Cash isn't just a number on a spreadsheet - it's your business's life support system. With a simple 13-week forecast, a panic button playbook, and a weekly huddle, you'll stop refreshing your bank balance at midnight and start making confident decisions about growth, hiring, and that vacation you've been postponing since 2019.
The best part? You can set this up in about an hour and run your first Monday huddle next week.
Ready to Stop Worrying About Money?
Message me "100" and I'll send you the one-page implementation plan and the actual spreadsheet template. No forms to fill out, no 47-step email sequence, just the tools to get started.
You can reach me here:
💌[email protected]
WA: 07480065427
PS For CEOs
I know talking about money and looking at forecasts is tough. You’ve got big visions, calls to make and a calendar that is as precarious as the late rounds of Jenga BUT this matters - cash is vital to your business and is the driver of so much stress in your, and your team’s, life. This is a much less painful way to address it but the team needs you on these calls. You are a safe pair of hands to them and they need your input, certainly in the beginning. So show up to every call. If you wish you had a safe pair of hands to lean on - give me a call, I can help).
PPS For Business Strategists:
If you're working with service business clients and NOT helping them with cash flow, you're missing the biggest pain point they have. Want to add this to your toolkit? Let's chat about certification and training that'll make you the strategist they can't live without.
