A café owner reviews a cash-flow plan with a bookkeeper at a table.

Build a weekly cash-flow forecast for a café or restaurant

A weekly cash-flow forecast shows when money is expected to reach your bank account and when payments must leave it. Start with the available opening balance, add expected receipts and subtract planned payments. Carry the closing balance into the next week, then investigate shortfalls before they arrive.

This guide helps café and restaurant owners turn bank, settlement, supplier and payroll information into a practical decision tool. It is general operational guidance, not accounting, tax, lending or insolvency advice. Have your accountant or bookkeeper check the method, tax treatment and obligations that apply to your business.

Separate sales, profit and cash

A busy service does not guarantee that money will be available for tomorrow's payments. Card receipts may settle later, a delivery platform may deduct charges before paying you and a supplier invoice may fall due before the ingredients generate sales.

Profit and cash also answer different questions. Buying equipment can take cash out of the bank without appearing as a single ordinary operating expense in the profit report. Borrowed money increases the bank balance without becoming trading revenue. Loan principal repayments reduce cash even though they are different from interest expenses.

Use the forecast alongside your financial reports. It should explain liquidity and timing, while other reports help assess sustainable margins. Do not improve an apparent trading result by hiding owner contributions or borrowing inside sales receipts.

Choose a weekly rhythm and a useful horizon

A rolling 13-week view is one practical starting point, not a mandatory rule. Choose a horizon that reveals your major payment cycles and foreseeable commitments. If you are opening a venue or approaching a seasonal closure, extend the view far enough to include those events.

Use consistent week boundaries and label the dates. Assign one person to maintain the file and a second person, such as the owner or bookkeeper, to review important changes. Keep a version of the forecast before replacing estimates with actual figures.

For a venue paid by several channels, schedule the review after the main settlement reports become available. The meeting should end with decisions, owners and dates, rather than a discussion about whether last week's sales felt strong.

Gather records before entering estimates

Collect recent bank activity, card settlements, delivery-platform statements, outstanding customer invoices, supplier invoices, rent schedules and expected payroll payments. Add tax and superannuation information from the people responsible for those obligations.

List regular payments that are easy to overlook: insurance, software, equipment finance, waste collection, servicing and annual renewals. Check direct debits against actual bank records. Separate committed expenditure from purchases still being considered.

Keep the evidence beside the assumption. For example: “Platform receipts expected Thursday, based on the provider's settlement schedule; disputed adjustment excluded pending confirmation.” That is more useful than entering the same round amount every week with no explanation.

For a new venue, identify which inputs come from quotes, contracts or estimates. Do not treat an untested sales forecast as equivalent to a confirmed receivable.

Establish the opening balance

Start with a reconciled balance at a defined date and time. Explain whether the forecast covers one trading account or several accounts. Avoid counting the same money twice when it moves between accounts included in the model.

Distinguish cash held for a purpose from cash the owner is comfortable spending. A tax reserve may appear in the bank total while remaining committed to a future payment. Show the payment in the forecast and make the reserve visible to the person making purchase decisions.

If you show access to an approved finance facility, label it separately from cash. Do not assume approval, continued availability or drawdown timing. Ask your adviser how to present restrictions and commitments without confusing them with ordinary trading receipts.

Forecast receipts by expected bank date

Begin with each sales channel. Estimate the amount that will actually arrive and the week it is expected to arrive. Consider weekends, public holidays, settlement cut-offs, refunds, withheld amounts and provider adjustments using current provider information.

Choose a consistent treatment for fees. If you forecast card receipts after fees have been deducted, do not subtract those same fees again as a separate bank payment. If you model gross receipts and a separate fee payment, reconcile both components to the provider's actual process.

Keep customer deposits and gift-card receipts identifiable. They bring in cash but can also create future service obligations. Ask your accountant how those items should connect to the accounting records; the cash forecast does not determine when revenue is recognised.

For channel reconciliation, see the delivery-platform profitability guide. Use that work to improve settlement assumptions without turning this forecast into a second channel-margin model.

Schedule payments using real obligations

Enter supplier payments in the week they are due under the agreed terms. Include both invoices already received and realistic expected purchases. Show essential future orders separately if their value remains uncertain.

For payroll, ask the payroll adviser to reconcile net wages, withheld amounts, superannuation and other payroll-related payments. A common mistake is to enter gross wages as a bank payment and then add deductions again. Another is to enter only employees' take-home pay and forget amounts paid separately later.

Current Fair Work guidance on Payday Super explains the change from 1 July 2026: employers pay super alongside wages so contributions generally reach employees' funds within seven business days. Confirm applicable details and exceptions with the ATO and your payroll adviser. Do not carry an old quarterly-super assumption into a current weekly model.

Record payment initiation dates as well as due dates where processing time matters. An obligation is not necessarily completed when someone presses “submit”.

Keep GST treatment consistent

The Australian Government cash-flow guidance calls for clear identification of whether figures include or exclude GST. For a bank-based operational forecast, discuss modelling actual expected cash receipts and payments, including GST where charged, with your accountant.

Show the relevant tax settlement separately using the business's actual reporting arrangements. Do not estimate every GST payment as one-eleventh of all money received: not every receipt or payment has the same treatment, and credits, adjustments and reporting basis matter.

Write the chosen method above the working grid. If you import figures from a report that excludes GST, adjust them deliberately rather than mixing them with GST-inclusive bank amounts. Have the bookkeeper check one completed week before copying the approach forward.

Work through a three-week example

The following figures are hypothetical AUD cash amounts, not venue benchmarks or a tax calculation. They represent expected bank movements. The payment totals include the obligations assumed for this example, without prescribing their legal due dates.

  • Week 1: Opening cash $12,000; receipts $18,000; payments $16,000; closing cash $14,000.
  • Week 2: Opening cash $14,000; receipts $17,000; payments $25,000; closing cash $6,000.
  • Week 3: Opening cash $6,000; receipts $16,000; payments $24,000; closing cash negative $2,000.

Each line uses opening cash plus receipts minus payments. Week 2 looks manageable on its own, but it leaves little room for the obligations clustered in Week 3. The negative result is a forecast funding gap, not permission to let payments fail.

Assume the owner has also chosen an illustrative minimum operating buffer of $5,000. That is a management threshold for this example, not a recommended national amount. Week 3 would require $7,000 of improvement to meet that buffer, rather than merely $2,000 to avoid a negative balance.

The owner now has a specific decision date and amount to discuss with the accountant. “Sales need to improve” is too vague to be an action plan.

Test a downside scenario

Copy the base forecast and change a small number of assumptions with a clear reason. Possible scenarios include lower receipts, a delayed settlement, an essential repair or an opening delay. Do not combine every conceivable problem into a scenario nobody can interpret.

In the example, a $3,000 reduction in Week 3 receipts would change closing cash from negative $2,000 to negative $5,000, if other figures stayed the same. Record why that reduction might occur and what evidence would make you revise it.

Keep obligations realistic. Reducing sales does not automatically reduce rent, already-committed purchases or every labour cost by the same proportion. Show actions separately from the problem: an unapproved funding request or hoped-for supplier extension is not a confirmed receipt or changed due date.

Decide before the shortfall week

Review discretionary spending, overdue customer receipts, purchase timing and other options with the owner and adviser. Contact suppliers early if seeking different terms; retain the agreement before changing the forecast. Do not assume wages, tax or other obligations can simply be deferred.

Create an action line with the amount, responsible person, evidence needed and decision deadline. For example: “Owner to decide whether to postpone the optional furniture purchase by Tuesday; forecast remains unchanged until the decision is recorded.”

If the business may be unable to pay debts when due, seek qualified advice promptly. A spreadsheet is not a remedy for financial distress, and a positive later week does not resolve an earlier payment failure.

Replace estimates with actuals and explain differences

At each weekly review, reconcile actual bank movements to the model. Investigate material differences in amount and timing. A delayed receipt may belong in next week's forecast, while a missing sale may never arrive.

Keep a short variance note: assumption, actual result, reason and forecast change. Repeatedly optimistic receipts should lead to a revised assumption, not a fresh explanation every Monday. Add a new week at the end so the planning horizon keeps moving.

The first-week operations review provides a broader review structure. Your cash discussion should feed into it without losing the detail needed to act before payment dates.

Your next action

Build the next four weeks from current bank, invoice and payroll evidence before extending the forecast. Ask your bookkeeper to check the opening balance, fee treatment, payroll components and GST method. Then choose a regular review time and keep the first forecast for comparison.

The free Food Cost Percentage Calculator can support ingredient-cost checks. It does not forecast cash. The café opening guide supplies broader planning guidance, rather than a dedicated weekly cash-flow workbook.

References

Source review date: 5 September 2026. Calculations are illustrative and do not determine tax, employment or financing obligations.

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