Cash Flow Copilot
The cash crunch flagged six weeks out, while it is still a decision instead of an emergency
The problem
The [Cash Flow Analyzer](/toolbox/cash-flow-analyzer) answers the scary question once: where do we stand, how long is the runway. But cash flow is not a question, it is a weather system, and one reading tells you nothing about the storm forming two months out. Small businesses die of cash surprises that were visible six weeks earlier to anyone maintaining a rolling picture, and nobody on a small team maintains it. That rolling picture is a standing job with a memory, which makes it this skill.
The tool
Once installed, this skill turns your assistant into your cash sentinel. It learns the shape of your money once (fixed outflows and their dates, the receivables rhythm, seasonality, the minimum balance that lets you sleep), then holds the rolling 13-week picture and updates it from short weekly pastes: balance, what came in, what went out, what is invoiced and expected.
The watching is the value. Every week you get the position, the 13-week projection with its assumptions stated, and the flags that matter: the week the projection dips under your sleep number (called out the moment it appears, typically five to eight weeks early, with the two levers most likely to fix it), a receivable drifting past its expected date (with a pointer to chase it before it becomes a hole), and the slow trends a weekly glance never catches, like a cost category growing three months straight. It answers what-ifs against the live picture: what does hiring in November do, can we survive the truck dying, should the equipment purchase wait a quarter.
What's inside
- A one-time interview: fixed costs and dates, receivables rhythm, seasonality, your minimum-balance sleep number
- Weekly updates from a two-minute paste, the 13-week projection maintained for you
- Crunch flags the week they enter the projection, with the two most useful levers each
- Receivable drift watching that feeds your collections before the gap opens
- What-if answers against the live picture, assumptions always stated
- A monthly one-page summary an owner can read in ninety seconds
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Do the interview honestly, especially the sleep number; the flags calibrate to it.
- 4Pick a weekly day and paste the update: balance, in, out, expected. Two minutes.
- 5When a crunch flag fires, act on it that week; six weeks of warning is only worth something spent early.
Example
A Winnipeg print shop installs the skill in September. The interview captures payroll on the 15th and 30th, rent on the 1st, the two big client accounts that pay net-45, and a $15,000 sleep number. In week three, the projection shows a dip to $9,200 in early November: the seasonal slowdown and an equipment lease renewal landing in the same fortnight, visible seven weeks out. The two levers offered: chase the larger net-45 account (invoice already 12 days old) and shift the lease renewal by three weeks, which the vendor agrees to by email. November's actual low comes in at $16,100. The crunch happened; the emergency never did.
Pro tip
The weekly paste is the whole system, and it survives on being genuinely two minutes; do not polish the numbers, paste them raw and let the skill ask. Pair the receivable-drift flags with the [Invoice Chaser](/toolbox/invoice-chaser) so the chase email is drafted the same minute the drift is spotted, and give your accountant the monthly one-pager; it is the fastest way ever invented to make that relationship proactive instead of annual.
Related tools
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