13-week cash flow forecast
What is a 13-week cash flow forecast, and why do lenders ask for one in a workout?
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BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
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A 13-week cash flow forecast sets out, week by week for a quarter, the cash a business expects to receive and pay and the balance it will hold at the end of each week. Lenders ask for one when a business is under pressure, because annual and monthly forecasts hide the week in which wages, tax or a key supplier cannot be paid. It is rolled forward every week and compared with what actually happened, and the gap between forecast and actual is often more telling than the forecast itself.
BASIS Practitioner judgment from sixteen years in commercial banking, set out in How Bankers Think (Highbank Press, 2026). Every borrower on this site is a composite constructed for teaching, not a client. The market is mid-market commercial lending as practised in New Zealand and Australia; where a convention differs elsewhere, the page says so.
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