SERVICE · SINGAPORE
See the cash crunch coming, months before it arrives.
A rolling 13-week forecast shows you the weeks that are tight before they arrive, built from your actual receivables, payables and payroll — not a spreadsheet guess. An annual budget gives you a plan to measure the year against. Our agents build and refresh both from your books; your accountant sets the assumptions, reads the risks and tells you what to do about them.
Facts checked on 12 September 2026
WHAT THIS COVERS
The work, in plain terms.
Profit and cash are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where SMEs get into trouble. Imagine a business that wins a large contract, delivers the work, and books a healthy profit on paper — but the customer takes its full payment term to pay, the business has already paid its suppliers and its staff, and GST is due on a sale it has not yet been paid for. The profit and loss statement looks fine. The bank account does not. Nothing in that sequence is a sign of a badly run business; it is simply what happens when income and expense are recognised at different times to when cash actually moves.
Singapore SMEs run into this because several things pull cash out of the business on their own timetable, regardless of how sales are going. Customers pay on their terms, not yours, so receivables sit uncollected while costs keep running. GST collected from customers is not the business's money to keep — it is due to IRAS one month after each quarter, and corporate tax falls due on its own schedule too. CPF contributions for staff are due every month regardless of what has been collected from customers. And stock has to be bought and paid for before it can be sold, tying up cash in the gap between purchase and sale. Each of these obligations is manageable on its own; the difficulty is that several of them land in the same week, and a business watching only its profit and loss statement has no way of seeing that collision coming. None of this shows up clearly in a profit and loss statement, which is exactly why a business can look profitable and still be short of cash to pay its bills.
A rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast and an annual budget address this directly by putting cash, not profit, at the centre of the picture. The 13-week forecast tracks actual cash in and out, week by week, far enough ahead to give you time to act before a shortfall arrives, and close enough to your real invoices and bills to be reliable rather than a rough estimate. The annual budget sets out what you expect to earn and spend, phased by month, so you can see how the year is tracking against the plan and where it is drifting. Together they turn cash flow from something you find out about in the bank balance into something you can see coming and plan around.
WHO IT'S FOR
Built for SMEs like these.
Lumpy revenue or long payment terms
Your income arrives in large, irregular amounts, or your customers take a long time to pay while your suppliers and staff need paying every month. A single big invoice can make a month look comfortable on paper while the weeks either side of it are genuinely tight. You need to see the gaps between money going out and money coming in before they turn into a problem, not after.
Planning a hire, a fit-out or a financing round
You are about to take on a new cost — a hire, new premises, equipment — or you are raising finance and need to show a lender what your cash position looks like. Each of these commits the business to spending before the benefit of the decision has arrived. You want the numbers modelled before you commit, not discovered afterwards.
Had one near-miss on payroll
There was a month when meeting payroll was tighter than it should have been, and you do not want to find yourself in that position again without warning. A near-miss is a signal worth acting on rather than putting down to a one-off bad month. You want to know your cash position weeks in advance, not the day it becomes tight.
THE SINGAPORE RULES
What the regulator expects.
Cash-flow forecasting itself has no statutory form or filing deadline — nobody at IRAS or ACRA checks whether you keep one. But the obligations that drive your cash position have fixed dates of their own, and missing them costs you cash on top of whatever caused the shortfall in the first place. A forecast is only useful if it has the real dates built into it.
Lenders have their own expectations too. If you are applying for a working-capital facility or a scheme such as the Enterprise Financing Scheme, the application typically requires a forecast and management accounts. And company law itself expects directors to know their cash position — trading while insolvent is a duty to avoid, not a technicality. The rows below set out the dates that matter and why each one belongs in your forecast.
| Requirement | What applies |
|---|---|
| GST payments | GST collected from customers is due to IRAS one month after the end of each quarter. It sits in your bank account before then, but it is not your money to spend — your forecast needs to set it aside. |
| Corporate tax | Paid either through instalments set against your Estimated Chargeable Income or as a lump sum once IRAS has completed its assessment. Either way it is a cash outflow that has to be planned for, not just an accounting entry. |
| CPF contributions | Due by the 14th of each month, regardless of whether your customers have paid you. This is a predictable, fixed cash outflow, and it belongs in every forecast. |
| Annual return fee and secretarial costs | Timed from your financial year end rather than the calendar year, these are easy to forget because they do not recur monthly. A forecast built around your FYE catches them before they surprise you. |
| Bank facilities and financing | Working-capital loans and Enterprise Financing Scheme applications typically require a cash-flow forecast and management accounts as part of the application. Without them, the conversation with the lender does not get very far. |
| Solvency | Directors must not allow the company to trade while insolvent. Knowing your runway — the number of weeks of cash left before it runs out — is what makes that a duty you can actually meet, not just a legal phrase. |
HOW WE HANDLE IT
Step by step, every period.
- 01
Baseline
The agent builds your first 13-week forecast from what is already in your books — outstanding receivables and their due dates, payables you owe, your payroll run and CPF dates, and the tax dates that apply to you. This baseline is where the forecast becomes specific to your business rather than a generic template.
- 02
Assumptions
Numbers alone do not make a forecast useful — judgement does. Your accountant sits down with you to set the assumptions behind it: how quickly customers really pay, what is genuinely committed spend versus optional, and which known changes are coming. This conversation is what turns a spreadsheet into a plan you can trust.
- 03
Weekly refresh
As invoices are raised, bills come in and payments clear, the agent updates the forecast so it reflects where your cash position actually stands this week, not where it stood when the forecast was first built. A forecast that is not kept current is worse than no forecast at all.
- 04
Annual budget
Alongside the short-term forecast, the agent builds an annual budget phased by month, and tracks your actual results against it as the year goes on. This shows you where the year is running ahead of or behind plan long before the annual accounts are finalised.
- 05
Scenarios and actions
When the forecast shows a tight week coming, your accountant does not just flag it — they set out the options: chase a specific receivable, defer a specific payment, or arrange financing in good time. You get a decision to make, not just a warning.
AGENTS + ACCOUNTANT
Who does what.
Building and refreshing a 13-week forecast is repetitive, data-heavy work — pulling receivables, payables, payroll and tax dates together every week is exactly the kind of task an agent can do quickly and without the errors that creep in when a person does it by hand between other jobs. But a forecast is only as good as the assumptions behind it, and deciding what a risk actually means for the business — whether to chase a customer, defer a supplier, or arrange financing — needs judgement and knowledge of your specific circumstances that no agent has. Splitting the work this way means the forecast is rebuilt on the schedule your business needs, and a named accountant is the one deciding what the numbers mean and what to do about them.
- Build a rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast from your books
- Update it as invoices and bills come in
- Track actuals against budget
- Sets the assumptions with you
- Highlights cash risks early and what to do about them
WHAT GOES WRONG WITHOUT IT
The expensive mistakes.
Confusing profit with cash
A profitable month on paper can still be a cash-negative month in the bank, because income and expense are recognised at different times to when money actually moves. Businesses that only look at the profit and loss statement can be genuinely surprised by a cash shortfall that a cash-flow forecast would have shown weeks in advance.
Forgetting the GST and tax bills
Cash sitting in the bank account before a GST or tax payment is due can look like money available to spend. Treating it that way rather than setting it aside means the payment, when it falls due, forces a scramble — or a late payment penalty — that a forecast built around the real dates would have avoided.
Hiring on optimism
A new hire, a bigger office or a piece of equipment is committed spend from the day you sign, whether or not the revenue you were expecting to justify it arrives on schedule. Modelling the decision against a cash-flow forecast before committing shows whether the business can carry it through a slower month.
Discovering the problem in the bank balance
Without a forecast, the first sign of a cash problem can be the bank balance itself, by which point there is little time left to act. A 13-week forecast is designed to show the same problem weeks earlier, while chasing a receivable or arranging finance is still a real option.
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
No more cash surprises.
- A rolling 13-week cash-flow forecast, refreshed as invoices and bills land
- An annual budget phased by month
- Budget versus actual, so you can see where the year is tracking against plan
- Scenario models for the changes you are considering — a hire, a fit-out, a new financing round
- Early warning of tight weeks, with the options for dealing with them
- A financing-readiness pack — your 13-week forecast, annual budget and management accounts, brought together for a loan or scheme application
INCLUDED IN YOUR PACKAGE
Included from the Fractional Finance Team package.
Senior finance leadership, on demand. Every package is a fixed monthly fee with a named accountant on your file — see what each one includes and choose the right starting point.
Common questions.
Why 13 weeks?
Thirteen weeks is far enough ahead to give you real time to act on what the forecast shows — chase a receivable, defer a payment, arrange financing — and close enough to your actual invoices and bills that the numbers are reliable rather than a rough guess. Shorter than that and you lose the warning time; longer than that and the detail becomes speculation rather than a forecast you can rely on.
How often is it updated?
The agent refreshes it weekly, as invoices are raised, bills come in and payments clear, so it reflects your current position rather than where things stood when it was first built. Your accountant reviews it on the same cycle and flags anything that has changed since the last update.
Do I need a budget if I'm small?
Size is not really the deciding factor — cash timing is. A small business with lumpy revenue or long payment terms can be under more cash pressure than a larger one with steady, predictable income. If you have ever been surprised by your bank balance, a budget and a forecast are worth having regardless of your size.
Can you help with a bank loan application?
Yes. Banks and schemes such as the Enterprise Financing Scheme want to see a cash-flow forecast and management accounts as part of the application, and we build the financing-readiness pack from your forecast, budget and management accounts so it is ready to submit. Your accountant can also talk through the numbers with the lender if that is useful.
What's the difference from management accounts?
Management accounts look backwards — they tell you what happened last month, in the format of a profit and loss statement and balance sheet. A cash-flow forecast looks forward, at the actual cash you expect in and out over the coming weeks. The two work together: the forecast uses your management accounts and books as its starting point.
What do you need from me?
Access to your books, so the agent can pull receivables, payables and payroll — straightforward if bookkeeping is already with us. Beyond that, your input on the assumptions that numbers alone cannot capture: how quickly a particular customer really pays, and which upcoming decisions, like a hire or a fit-out, need modelling.
Need this handled?
Tell us where the current process stands. We'll recommend a practical scope and clear next step.