A 13-week forecast that names the week you run short, while there is still time to move something. Free Excel, works offline, no add-ins.
The sheet you act on. Opening balance, money in, committed payments, discretionary payments, closing balance, week by week for a quarter, with three rows filling themselves from your two registers. Two lines at the bottom tell you the first week you go short and the lowest balance you reach.
Salaries, PF and ESI, GST, TDS, rent and EMIs sit in one block because their dates are not yours to choose. Suppliers, marketing and drawings sit in another. The split is what turns a scary number into a decision.
Every unpaid invoice, its due date, days overdue, and an ageing bucket that fills itself. Pick the week you actually expect the money and it lands in that week of the forecast on its own.
What you owe and when. Mark whether each supplier is a registered micro or small enterprise and give each bill an expected week: MSE bills flow into the forecast as committed, the rest as discretionary. The sheet explains how to check that on the Udyam portal, including the trap that medium enterprises are registered there but not protected.
The same logic across a financial year, for a conversation with your bank or your board. It also names your lowest month, which is usually not the month owners expect.
Every rule used, with the section it comes from and the document it was read in, plus the one figure we deliberately do not print because it moves.
Four weeks of a real-shaped squeeze in a Pune retail business, filled in. Profitable on paper, negative in week 3, and solvable without borrowing a rupee.
Petpooja Invoice keeps billing and live inventory in one place and records every transaction, so the sales and stock figures you forecast with come from your books rather than from memory.
Explore Petpooja InvoiceA profit and loss account books a sale when you make it. Your bank account only moves when the customer actually pays. A healthy profit margin does not protect you from either. Those are two different calendars, and businesses close the gap between them with money they may not have that week.
The asymmetry is what makes it dangerous. Money leaving an Indian business lands on dates nobody chooses: salaries at month end, PF and ESI behind them, GST and TDS on their own days, rent, an EMI. Money arriving depends on when a customer decides to pay. A quarter can be profitable in every month and still contain a week where the two do not line up.
A cash flow statement will not warn you about that week, because it is prepared afterwards, for the auditor or the bank. It explains what happened to your cash. This template does the other job: it looks forward, and names the week.
The part most spreadsheets miss is what to do next. A shortfall has two very different causes. Either the money genuinely is not there, or it is there and the payments are stacked in the wrong order. So the forecast reports both: your closing balance, and what your closing balance would be if you paid only the things whose dates you cannot move. If the second line stays positive, you do not need funding. You need to move a supplier payment by ten days.
One payment should not be moved casually. If a supplier is a registered micro or small enterprise, the MSMED Act 2006 sets the clock, and it is shorter than most buyers assume. Payment is due on the date agreed in writing; where nothing was agreed in writing, it is due within fifteen days of acceptance. A written agreement can push that out, but never past forty-five days. Miss it and you owe compound interest, with monthly rests, at three times the RBI bank rate, and that interest is not deductible when computing your income. That is why the payables sheet asks you to flag them, and why they sit with the payments you treat as fixed.
It pairs naturally with the tools you may already use: a break-even calculator for whether the model works, and financial projections for where the year is heading. This one answers a narrower and more urgent question: can you pay what is due in the next 13 weeks.
A Pune retail business over four weeks. Every figure below is in the file:
How long you have to pay a micro or small enterprise when nothing is agreed in writing. A written agreement can extend it, but never past forty-five days, so forty-five is the ceiling rather than the default most people assume it is.
Source: MSMED Act 2006, sections 2(b) and 15Compound interest, with monthly rests, at three times the bank rate notified by the RBI, payable when a buyer misses that window, and it applies whatever the agreement says. The interest is also not allowed as a deduction when computing income.
Source: MSMED Act 2006, sections 16 and 23The forecast window. One quarter is long enough for a problem to become visible while you can still act on it, and short enough that the numbers you enter are estimates you can defend.
A design choice, not a statistic. The reasoning is on the Instructions sheet.Revenue is booked when the invoice is raised. Cash arrives when the customer pays. Building a cash forecast on P&L figures reproduces exactly the blind spot the forecast exists to remove.
A customer who has taken 60 days on every invoice this year will take 60 days on this one. Entering the contractual due date makes the sheet agree with you and helps nobody. Forecast the date you expect, then send a payment reminder to try to improve it.
Salaries and statutory payments are not negotiable in the same way a supplier invoice is. Without the split, every shortfall looks like it needs funding, and most of them do not.
Stretching those payments carries compound interest at three times the bank rate under the MSMED Act, and the clock starts after fifteen days when nothing is agreed in writing. It is often the most expensive money in the business, and it never appears on a rate card.
Uncleared cheques and pending settlements are not spendable. Start from the balance that has actually cleared, or the whole forecast is optimistic by exactly that amount.
A forecast is a habit, not a document. Rolling it forward every week catches the customer who has gone quiet while there is still time to chase them.
Most shortfalls in a growing business are timing, not losses. The question is whether the committed payments are covered, and that is a different number from the closing balance.
| Aspect | Checking the balance each morning | With this template |
|---|---|---|
| When you find out | The week it happens | Up to 13 weeks earlier |
| What you learn | That you are short | Which week, and by how much |
| Diagnosis | Every shortfall looks the same | Real gap or wrong payment order, separated |
| Usual response | Look for an overdraft | Move a discretionary payment first, borrow only if needed |
| Overdue customers | Noticed when someone complains | Ageing buckets fill themselves as dates pass |
| Micro and small suppliers | Paid in whatever order the file sits in | Flagged and sorted to the front |
| Effort to maintain | None, and no warning either | A few minutes each Monday |
Swipe the table sideways to see the full comparison.
Download the free template, enter your opening balance, and see the next 13 weeks.
Petpooja is India's leading SME business software suite, trusted by 1,50,000+ businesses across restaurants, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. From billing and payroll to task management and procurement Petpooja helps Indian businesses run better, every day.
Petpooja Invoice raises GST invoices and keeps billing and live inventory in one place, recording every transaction, so the numbers you forecast with are the numbers you actually billed.
