Simple 3-month cash flow forecast

Give this prompt your bank balance, expected payments in and bills going out, and it lays out a week-by-week cash flow table you can paste into a spreadsheet. It highlights weeks where cash runs low and suggests practical fixes.

text-cash-flow-forecast — chatgpt — 95 words

Help me build a simple 3-month cash flow forecast for my small business.

Cash in the bank today: [AMOUNT]
Money expected in (with dates):
[e.g. client payments, sales per month]
Money going out (with dates):
[e.g. rent, salaries, suppliers, loan EMI, tax]

Lay it out week by week as a table I can copy into a spreadsheet: opening balance, money in, money out, closing balance. Highlight any week where cash runs low. Suggest practical ways to fix a gap, such as chasing invoices earlier or moving a payment, and list the assumptions I should double-check.

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Update it every Monday with real numbers. A forecast is only useful if it stays current.

Get a better result

What you will get

A week-by-week table for three months with opening balance, money in, money out and closing balance, any low-cash week highlighted, practical fixes for gaps and a list of assumptions to double-check.

Common mistake

Payments are listed without dates, so the weeks come out wrong.

Fix: Give each payment a date. If a client usually pays late, enter the date they really pay, not the date on the invoice.

Also watch for

Rare costs such as tax or a loan EMI are forgotten. List them separately with their months, and add “check my list for costs a small business often forgets”.
The table does not paste cleanly into a spreadsheet. Ask for “a plain table with one header row and numbers only, no symbols inside number cells”.

Try a variation: late-payment test

Add “repeat the forecast if my biggest client pays 30 days late”. Compare the two tables to see how much cash you need in reserve.

Still not right? Reply with this

Use the real payment dates, add the rare costs I listed by month, and give me a plain table that pastes cleanly into a spreadsheet.