Stabilize Cash with a 13-Week Forecast

Aim: Turn the Business Around → Objective: Restore positive
operating cash flow within 9 months → Initiative: Stand up a rolling
13-week cash forecast with weekly variance review

Fits well at: $500K–$25M businesses in distress; especially powerful
for owner-operated companies where one person is doing the financial
work on a Sunday night.

What this is

A live, rolling 13-week cash forecast that updates as bank transactions,
invoices, and payments flow in. It replaces the static spreadsheet that
was already wrong by Tuesday morning. The forecast becomes a tool the
owner uses to make decisions every day — pay this vendor or stretch
them, push this collection or wait, hire now or in three months — not
a deck for the board.

What "done" looks like

• A 13-week forecast model in HAPPEE, refreshed continuously from
  accounting and bank data

• AR aging by customer with collection priorities and follow-up actions
  scheduled

• AP aging by vendor with stretch/pay decisions logged

• Weekly cash council on the calendar (recurring), with prepared agenda

• Daily cash position dashboard

• Trigger thresholds with pre-decided actions ("if 13-week minimum
  drops below $X, defer category Y by Z days")

• Lender or board cash pack, auto-assembled weekly from the same model

The work, decomposed

• Sub-objective: Stand up the forecast → connect bank and accounting,
  define driver assumptions, build the model

• Sub-objective: Clean the receivables → categorize, prioritize,
  follow up

• Sub-objective: Manage the payables → categorize, sequence,
  negotiate where needed

• Sub-objective: Operate the cadence → daily check, weekly council,
  variance analysis

• Sub-objective: Communicate up → lender/board pack, covenant
  tracking

How it runs in HAPPEE

Agents involved

• Finance agent (Alex). Owns the model. Pulls bank and accounting
  data, computes the 13-week projection nightly, runs scenarios on
  request, drafts the weekly cash council deck, and assembles the lender
  pack. Surfaces variance from plan and proposes corrective levers.

• Sales agent. Runs collection follow-ups against the AR list —
  emails, calls, escalations — and reports outcomes back to the model
  in near-real-time.

• Operations agent. Handles vendor communications when a stretch is
  approved, drafts the language, and tracks each commitment.

Where the work lives

• Accounting — chart of accounts, journal entries, AR/AP, bank
  reconciliation, GL imports from prior systems

• Financial Models — the 13-week forecast with named scenarios
  (base, stretch, lender-ask)

• Analytics time-series — daily cash, AR DSO, AP DPO, forecast vs.
  actual variance, trigger-threshold proximity

• Dashboards (Live Views) — daily cash position, AR aging, AP
  aging, week-by-week forecast vs. actual

• Tracker — one work item per priority AR or AP account, owner and
  next step explicit

• Channels — #cash-council with the recurring meeting attached

• Knowledge Base — written cash policy, trigger thresholds, lender
  covenants, decisions log

• Notifications — mobile push when a trigger threshold is breached
  so the owner is alerted in the moment, not Friday afternoon

Rhythms

• Daily — Alex posts cash position and the day's recommended actions
  in #cash-council before 7am

• Weekly — cash council reviews variance, approves stretches, signs
  the lender pack

• Monthly — model assumptions revised against actuals; rolling
  window advanced

Data flows

• Bank transactions → categorized → forecast actuals

• Invoiced AR → aging buckets → collection priorities → forecast
  inflows

• AP commitments → scheduled outflows → forecast minimum balance

• Forecast minimum vs. trigger threshold → notification → channel post

Before HAPPEE vs. with HAPPEE

Day in the life

Tuesday, 6:50am. The owner opens the cash dashboard. The 13-week minimum
projects to $42K in week 8 — uncomfortably close to the $35K trigger.
In #cash-council, Alex's overnight brief lays out why: customer Acme's
$90K invoice is now 40 days past due, and a vendor payment to BigCo is
scheduled for Thursday. Three options posted with pros and cons:
(1) push BigCo to the following Tuesday, (2) accelerate Acme via a 2%
early-pay discount on the remaining $90K, (3) draw $50K on the line of
credit. The sales agent already has a draft message to Acme's AP
contact ready for review. The owner picks options 1 and 2, approves the
messages with one edit each, and moves on. Total elapsed: 12 minutes.
By lunch, BigCo has confirmed and Acme's AP has acknowledged. The
forecast updates. The minimum slides back to $58K.

Related Initiatives

• Operating expense audit and vendor consolidation
• Headcount and org-design reset
• Customer concentration and churn diagnosis
• Lender and investor communications rhythm

Features in play: Accounting · Imports · Financial Models · Analytics & Dashboards · Tracker · Channels · Meetings · Knowledge Base · Notifications · Reminders & Decisions · Agents