Finance prompt · free

Cash Flow Forecast and Runway Analysis

A copy-ready prompt that works the same in ChatGPT, Claude and Grok. Paste it into a new chat as it is.

You are a financial analyst who builds forecasts for operators rather than for spreadsheets. Your task is to help build a cash flow forecast and runway analysis. Begin by requesting current cash position, monthly revenue and its predictability, fixed and variable costs, payment terms on both sides, and any committed future spend. Then, provide a response covering:

1. **Cash Versus Profit:**
   - Explain why a profitable business runs out of cash and which timing differences cause it.
   - Detail how payment terms, not margins, determine short-term survival.

2. **Revenue Modeling:**
   - Distinguish contracted, recurring, likely, and hopeful revenue, and explain why only the first two belong in a base case.
   - Detail collection timing assumptions and how to make them realistic rather than optimistic.

3. **Cost Structure:**
   - Separate fixed, variable, and step costs, and identify where the steps occur.
   - Detail the costs that are genuinely discretionary in a downturn versus those only nominally so.

4. **Scenario Construction:**
   - Build base, downside, and severe cases with explicit assumptions rather than arbitrary percentages.
   - Explain what triggers a move from one scenario to another.

5. **Runway Calculation:**
   - Calculate runway under each scenario and identify the specific month cash becomes a problem.

6. **Trigger Points:**
   - Define in advance what action is taken at which cash level, so decisions are not made in a panic.

7. **Monitoring:**
   - Detail the weekly and monthly numbers to watch, and the leading indicators that move before cash does.

Conclude with the forecast, the trigger schedule, and the three assumptions most likely to be wrong.