13-Week Cash Flow Template for Agencies (and How to Use It)

Most 13-week cash flow templates were built for restructuring bankers and CFOs of manufacturing companies. They have rows for inventory, revolver draws and covenant tests that a 12-person agency will never use. The result is a spreadsheet you abandon by week three.

This page lays out a 13-week cash flow template built around how an agency actually makes and spends money: retainers, project milestones, late-paying clients, payroll on fixed dates and contractors who invoice whenever they like. You can rebuild it yourself in Excel or Google Sheets from the structure below, or download the finished model if you'd rather skip the setup.

If you want the full method behind it, read how to build a 13-week cash flow forecast for your agency. This page focuses on the template itself.

What a 13-week cash flow template does

A 13-week model shows cash, not profit, one week at a time for the next quarter. That matters for agencies because profit and cash drift apart constantly. You can book a profitable $30,000 project in March and still be short on payroll in April if the client pays on net-60.

Thirteen weeks is long enough to see a problem coming and short enough to forecast with reasonable accuracy. Each week you roll it forward: delete the week that just ended, replace estimates with actuals, and add a new week 13. That's what people mean by a rolling 13-week cash flow forecast.

The template structure

Set it up with weeks across the top (Week 1 through Week 13, each labelled with its start date) and these sections down the side.

1. Opening cash

One row: the cash in your operating account at the start of the week. Week 1 is your actual bank balance. Every week after that is the previous week's closing cash.

2. Cash in

Split receipts by how predictable they are, because that's how you'll judge risk later.

The single most useful habit: put each receipt in the week the client usually pays, not when the invoice says it's due. If a client always pays 15 days late, forecast it 15 days late.

3. Cash out

Pass-through costs deserve their own row. Agencies that front ad spend for clients often get caught when the media bill clears before the client reimburses.

4. Net cash flow and closing cash

• Net cash flow = Total cash in − Total cash out
• Closing cash = Opening cash + Net cash flow

5. Safety floor and warning flag

Add one input cell for your safety floor, the minimum cash balance you're comfortable holding (many owners use one month of payroll plus fixed costs). Then add a row that flags any week where closing cash dips below it:

=IF(closing_cash < safety_floor, "⚠ BELOW FLOOR", "")

Add conditional formatting so the closing cash cell turns red when the flag fires. This row is the whole point of the model. You're not trying to predict cash to the dollar; you're trying to spot the bad week early enough to act.

How to fill it in (first pass in about 30 minutes)

1. Pull your bank balance for Week 1 opening cash.
2. List every open invoice from your accounting tool and place each one in the week you expect to be paid.
3. Add retainers for the full 13 weeks, using each client's real payment pattern.
4. Add signed project milestones only. Leave pipeline deals out of the base case.
5. Enter payroll on actual pay dates for all 13 weeks.
6. Add fixed costs (rent, software, insurance) on their billing dates.
7. Estimate contractor spend from active projects.
8. Set your safety floor and look at which weeks get flagged.

How to read it

Look for three things every week:

• The lowest closing cash week. That's your real risk point, not the average.
• Concentration. If one client's payment is the difference between a safe week and a flagged one, you have a concentration problem, not just a timing problem.
• Drift. Compare last week's forecast to what actually happened. If receipts keep landing later than you forecast, push them out in future weeks too.

When a week gets flagged, you have options while it's still weeks away: chase a specific invoice, ask for a deposit on new work, move a contractor payment, delay a software renewal, or adjust owner pay. Two weeks' notice turns a crisis into a phone call.

Excel or Google Sheets?

Either works. The formulas above are identical in both. Google Sheets is easier if a bookkeeper or partner needs to update it; Excel is fine if you're the only one touching it. What matters more is that you update it at the same time every week. Ten minutes on Monday morning is enough once it's set up.

Common template mistakes

• Using invoice dates instead of expected payment dates. This is the most common reason forecasts look healthier than reality.
• Including unsigned pipeline. Keep a separate "upside" scenario if you want to see it, but don't let it hide a gap.
• Forgetting annual costs. Insurance renewals, annual software and tax payments are the classic surprise weeks.
• Never comparing forecast to actual. The model only gets accurate when you correct it.

Get the finished template

If you'd rather not build it from scratch, The Agency Cash Forecast is this exact 13-week model, ready to fill in, with the warning flags and safety floor already wired up. It's $97, delivered instantly, and includes a code for $97 off the full Agency Operations Vault if you later want the SOPs, Notion command center and client templates too.