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Module 17 — Cashflow, Banking & Financial Operations
Building a 60-Day Cashflow Forecast (template included)
12 min · interactive · Advanced
Most operators know what they made last month. Few know what they'll have in their bank account 60 days from now. The gap between revenue and available cash creates the cashflow crunches that kill scaling stores. The 60-day forecast is the operational document that surfaces these crunches before they happen — and it takes 90 minutes to build the first time, 15 minutes per week to maintain.
Why 60 days, not 30 or 90
The forecast horizon matters:
- 30 days: too short to catch quarterly tax obligations (which arrive every 90 days) or seasonal cycles
- 60 days: captures the cashflow ritual cycle — Stripe payouts, supplier payments, ad spend cadence, and the quarterly tax filing if you're in one
- 90 days: too long for accuracy; predictions degrade past 60 days
The 60-day forecast strikes the balance: long enough to catch most cashflow surprises, short enough to be reliably accurate.
The forecast structure
A 60-day forecast is a spreadsheet with rows for each line item and columns for each week (8 columns covering 8 weeks).
Income rows:
- Expected revenue (based on trailing 30-day average × growth/decline factor)
- Expected Stripe net payouts (revenue × 0.95 typical, after fees and reserves)
- Other income (referral fees, affiliate income if you receive any)
Expense rows:
- COGS (typically 25-35% of revenue, based on your margin)
- Shipping costs (if separate from COGS)
- Payment fees (already accounted for in Stripe net, but track separately for clarity)
- Ad spend (Meta, TikTok, Google — by platform)
- Platform fees (Shopify, Klaviyo, apps)
- VA/contractor payments
- Inventory bulk orders (if buy-hold)
- Tax payments (quarterly — note the date)
- Tax professional fees
- Other operating expenses (subscriptions, tools, services)
Calculated rows:
- Weekly net cashflow (Income - Expenses)
- Cumulative cash position (week's end balance)
- Headroom days (cumulative balance ÷ daily expenses)
The first-build process (90 minutes)
- Gather historical data (30 min). Pull last 90 days of: Shopify revenue, Stripe payouts, ad spend by platform, supplier invoices, tax payments, all subscription costs.
- Build the spreadsheet (45 min). Create a Google Sheet (or use Xero's cashflow forecasting tool). Set up rows and 8 weekly columns. Enter trailing average for income and routine expenses.
- Add irregular events (15 min). Tax filing dates, large supplier orders, any planned hires, expected accountant invoices, seasonal events (BFCM, financial year-end).
The result: a clear week-by-week view of cash position over the next 8 weeks.
Maintaining the forecast (15 min weekly)
Each Friday:
- Update last week's actuals (income, ad spend, supplier payments)
- Compare actual vs forecast (where did you over/under-shoot?)
- Adjust next 8 weeks based on new information (revenue trending higher? Adjust forecast up. New ad campaign launching? Add ad spend. Supplier delay? Push payment date.)
- Identify any forecast week with negative cumulative balance — that's the cashflow crunch you need to solve
The discipline of weekly maintenance makes the forecast reliable. Without it, the forecast becomes "the document I made one Saturday and never looked at again."
Reading the forecast for crunches
Three patterns the forecast catches:
Pattern 1: tax-quarter cash gap. You're running comfortable cashflow but week 7 of the forecast shows a $3,200 tax payment that drops your balance to negative.
Solution: increase your weekly tax set-aside, scale ad spend down 20% in weeks 5-7 to build buffer, or arrange Stripe accelerated payout for the filing week.
Pattern 2: Bulk inventory hit. You've scheduled a $8,000 supplier bulk order for week 4. Forecast shows weeks 4-5 going into deficit before next Stripe payout cycle catches up.
Solution: split the supplier order into 2 × $4,000 across weeks 4 and 6, or delay the order by 2 weeks.
Pattern 3: Ramping ad spend. You're scaling Meta from $50/day to