The 13-week forecast tells you whether cash covers the next three months. The 13-month plan answers the question behind it: does the business model hold across a full year — including seasonality, tax dates and capital spending? The two horizons belong together.
What is 13-month liquidity planning?
The 13-month plan is a rolling, monthly forecast of all cash in- and outflows across just over a year. It links operating liquidity to your P&L plan and shows how revenue, costs, taxes and investments move the bank balance over time — not just whether there is enough cash today, but whether there still is during the next seasonal dip.
13 weeks or 13 months?
Both, really. The 13-week view is granular enough to steer liquidity operationally — which invoice gets paid when. The 13-month view is the strategic layer: it spots seasonal troughs, the funding need for an investment, or the effect of new financing months in advance.
| Attribute | 13 weeks | 13 months |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | operational steering | strategic planning |
| Granularity | week / day | month |
| Data basis | cash flows | cash flows + P&L |
| Refresh | weekly | monthly, rolling |
How to build it as a rolling plan
Rolling means: as soon as a month closes, a new month is added at the end — the plan always stays 13 months long. The starting point is your current financial status from banks, receivables and payables. On top of it you layer expected cash flows from order backlog, payroll, tax dates and planned investments.
The real value comes from the plan-versus-actual review: each month you compare plan and actual, understand the variance and sharpen the next forecast. With every cycle the plan becomes more reliable — and more defensible in a bank meeting.
LiquidityLens combines the day-accurate short-term forecast with the rolling 13-month plan — on the same financial status, with no duplicate maintenance.
See the Liquidity Control Sprint