13-Week Cash Forecast Calculation and Validation Methodology

Inputs and schema

Canonical columns are id,date,direction,amount,category,notes. IDs are unique exact single-line strings. Direction is Receipt or Payment; amount is nonnegative with up to two decimals, including a legitimate zero. Category is required, notes optional and single-line. CSV is UTF-8, up to 2 MB and 5,000 events; no silent row deletion or automatic broker/accounting mapping.

Time and currency

Start is YYYY-MM-DD; the horizon includes that day and the next 90 days, grouped into 13 consecutive seven-day weeks. Every source event is retained even when outside the horizon. One currency per dataset, no FX conversion. Opening cash may be negative; buffer must be nonnegative. Dates use calendar days without business-day or holiday adjustments.

Scenarios and rounding

Baseline is 100 percent receipts/payments with zero delay. Each comparison scenario accepts 0–500 percent receipt/payment multipliers with up to two decimals and a whole receipt delay 0–90 days. Positive event cents times multiplier are rounded half-up once before grouping; a Payment is then subtracted. Scenario shifts can move a receipt across a horizon boundary.

Balances, gaps and low points

Daily closing cash equals daily opening plus included receipts minus included payments. Opening cash is included in minimum and breach checks; equal minima retain their earliest date. First negative uses a strict less-than-zero test; first below buffer uses a strict less-than-user-buffer test. Weekly minimum includes opening-of-week cash and its seven daily closes. Intraday ordering, credit limits, interest, accruals and taxes are not inferred.

Reproducibility and exclusions

Each scenario shows its own excluded event count and adjusted dates. Possible duplicate tuples use date, direction, numeric amount, category and notes; all rows remain. Results CSV contains all three scenarios; source CSV retains all events. JSON up to 8 MB contains source and settings and recalculates on restore. Formula-like text receives an apostrophe in CSV; JSON preserves exact original text.

Limits

No bank connection, probabilistic prediction, customer-credit model, currency conversion, accounting recognition or regulatory calculation. Results describe the assumptions entered and can omit real obligations. Supported amounts and dates are bounded; out-of-range runs are rejected rather than displayed with imprecise totals.