Finance & FP&A

How to build a 13-week cash flow forecast as Construction and Contractor Founders

Finance & FP&AFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're running three jobs at once and your cash flow 'forecast' is a running total in your head plus whatever QuickBooks shows when you log in on Sunday night. The problem is QuickBooks only sees what's been invoiced and paid — it doesn't know about the $38,000 draw request sitting in Buildertrend waiting for the GC to approve, the $12,000 sub payment due Thursday, or the fact that two customers are 45 days past due on progress billings. You're not short on data. You're short on a single view that pulls all of it together into 13 weeks of actual cash in and cash out. That view used to require a part-time controller or a Friday afternoon you don't have.

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Finance & FP&AFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A rolling 13-week cash flow forecast that pulls your real bank balances from Plaid and QuickBooks alongside open invoices, scheduled sub payments, and material draws — updated automatically, not rebuilt every week

Scenario models that show you what happens to cash if a draw approval slips two weeks, a customer pays 30 days late, or you add a crew for the spring pipeline — before you commit

A live spend dashboard that flags when your materials costs, sub invoices, or overhead are running ahead of where they should be at this point in the job cycle

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Runway Analysis Scenario Analysis Transaction Insights

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule (invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries) and syncs your Plaid bank transactions and balances on a schedule. Buildertrend, CoConstruct, or any field management software you use is automated through your browser — no API needed — so Starch can pull draw schedules, job cost summaries, and pending change order values directly from those portals and incorporate them into the forecast.

Prompts to copy

Build me a 13-week cash flow forecast using my Plaid bank accounts and QuickBooks data. Show inflows by week broken down by job/customer and outflows broken down by subcontractor payments, materials, payroll, and overhead. Flag any week where my projected ending balance drops below $25,000.

Create a scenario that shows what happens to my 13-week cash position if my two largest open draw requests — totaling $74,000 — slip by 3 weeks. Compare it to my current baseline and show me the worst week in each scenario.

Show me all transactions from the last 90 days categorized by: subcontractor payments, material suppliers, payroll, equipment, and overhead. Flag any vendor that charged me more than 20% above their prior month average and any new vendor that appeared in the last 60 days.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your QuickBooks account — Starch syncs invoices, bills, vendor payments, and journal entries on a schedule so your AR and AP are always current without you exporting anything.

2 Connect your business checking and any draw accounts through Plaid — Starch syncs transactions and live balances so the forecast starts with real cash on hand, not last month's closing balance.

3 If you use Buildertrend, CoConstruct, or another field management platform, Starch automates those portals through your browser to pull scheduled draw requests, pending change orders, and job cost summaries — no API or export needed.

4 Start with the Runway Analysis app to get your baseline burn rate and cash position. Tell Starch to customize it for construction: 'Break my inflows out by job and customer, and break outflows into subcontractor payments, materials, payroll, and general overhead.'

5 Layer in your forward-looking items by telling Starch: 'Add my open QuickBooks invoices as projected inflows in the weeks they're due, and add my open bills as projected outflows in the weeks I've agreed to pay them.'

6 Tell Starch to pull your pending draw requests from Buildertrend (via browser automation) and add them to the forecast in the week each draw is scheduled to be approved and funded.

7 Set a cash floor alert: 'Alert me any time my projected weekly ending balance falls below $25,000, and show me which specific inflow or outflow is causing the dip.'

8 Open Scenario Analysis and build your first what-if: 'Show me what happens to my 13-week cash if my two largest pending draw requests slip by 3 weeks. Keep everything else the same and show me the lowest balance week under each scenario.'

9 Build a second scenario for late customer payments: 'Model what happens if my three largest open invoices pay 30 days late instead of on their due dates. Show me whether I'd need to draw on my line of credit and if so, in which week.'

10 Open Transaction Insights and tell Starch: 'Show me my last 90 days of spending broken into subcontractor payments, material suppliers, payroll, equipment rentals, and overhead. Flag anything that's more than 20% higher than the same category last month.'

11 Set a weekly refresh cadence: 'Every Monday morning, update the 13-week forecast with the latest Plaid balances and QuickBooks data, pull any new draw requests from Buildertrend, and send me a Slack message with the current lowest projected balance and which week it occurs.'

12 As new jobs start or change orders get signed, tell Starch: 'Add a new inflow of $55,000 for the Henderson kitchen addition, scheduled across three draws in weeks 4, 8, and 12. Add $18,000 in subcontractor costs spread across weeks 2 through 10.' The forecast updates without you rebuilding anything.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

April 2026 — Three Concurrent Jobs, One Tight Week

Sample numbers from a real run

Plaid checking balance (April 1)	41,200
Open AR — Tillman remodel draw #3 (due April 9)	28,500
Open AR — Grayson new build draw #2 (due April 18)	46,000
Open AR — Westfield commercial TI, invoice 30 days overdue	22,750
Sub payment due — electrical (April 11)	14,800
Sub payment due — framing (April 14)	19,200
Material supplier ACH — April 8	8,600
Payroll — April 15	23,400
Projected low balance — week of April 14	17,900

You start April with $41,200 in the bank. The Runway Analysis forecast immediately flags week three (April 14–18) as a problem: the Tillman draw comes in April 9 but the Grayson draw doesn't land until April 18, and you've got $14,800 to the electrician on April 11, $19,200 to the framers on April 14, $8,600 in materials, and a $23,400 payroll run — all before Grayson funds. Projected balance that week: $17,900, which trips your $25,000 floor alert. The Westfield invoice is 30 days overdue at $22,750; if you run the 'Westfield pays 15 days late' scenario in Scenario Analysis, the week-three low drops to negative $4,800 and you need a line draw. You now know exactly which customer to call Monday morning and exactly how much cushion you're working with. Without this, you'd have found out on April 13 when you went to pay the framers.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Projected low-balance week: the single lowest cash balance across the 13-week window and which week it falls in

Days sales outstanding (DSO) by job: how many days past invoice date your largest customers are actually paying

Draw approval lag: average days between submitting a draw request and receiving funding, tracked by GC or owner

Subcontractor payment as % of revenue by job: whether your sub costs are tracking to your bid assumptions as the job runs

Overhead run rate vs. prior 90 days: whether your fixed costs (insurance, equipment, office) are creeping up relative to active job count

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

QuickBooks alone

QuickBooks shows you what has happened — paid invoices, cleared checks — but has no forward-looking cash projection and doesn't know about draw requests, pending change orders, or scheduled sub payments until they're entered manually.

Excel cash flow template

A spreadsheet model can be precise but it's only as current as the last time you updated it, which for most GCs under 20 crew means it's two weeks stale by the time you need it.

Buildertrend or CoConstruct financial reports

These tools are built for job costing and scheduling, not for rolling cash flow across multiple jobs simultaneously — they don't see your bank balance, AR aging, or sub payment schedule in one place.

Hiring a part-time controller or bookkeeper

A good controller solves this problem well but typically costs $2,500–$5,000/month, needs time to ramp on your job structure, and produces reports on a monthly cadence rather than a live rolling view.

Float or Dryrun (cash flow SaaS)

Purpose-built cash flow tools connect to QuickBooks well but don't have browser automation to pull draw schedules from your field software, and require manual entry for anything outside their API connections.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — runway analysis, scenario planning, transaction insights all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My job management software is Buildertrend — does Starch have a direct integration?

Starch automates Buildertrend through your browser — no API or export needed. It logs in, navigates to your draw schedules and job cost summaries, and pulls that data into the forecast. The same approach works for CoConstruct, Procore, or any other web-based field management tool you use.

QuickBooks shows my P&L but it's always missing something. Will this be the same problem?

Starch syncs QuickBooks entities — invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries — on a schedule, so the cash flow forecast reflects your actual AR and AP. It also pulls your live bank balance from Plaid independently, which means even if your QuickBooks isn't fully reconciled, the bank side is always current. The two inputs together give you a more complete picture than either alone.

I have some subs I pay with checks and some I pay via ACH — will both show up?

ACH payments clear through your bank account and show up in Plaid. Check payments appear once they clear as well. For future sub payments that haven't been issued yet, those come in as open bills from QuickBooks — so as long as you've entered the bill in QuickBooks (or Starch can pull it from your job software via browser automation), they'll show up as projected outflows in the right week.

Does Starch store my bank credentials?

No. Plaid handles bank connectivity using the same OAuth flow your bank uses for other financial apps. Starch receives transaction data and balances through Plaid; it never sees or stores your banking username or password.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified?

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If that's a hard requirement for connecting financial accounts, it's worth knowing upfront. It's on the roadmap.

My QuickBooks P&L reports aren't pulling correctly. Is that a Starch issue?

QuickBooks report views (P&L, Transaction List, Vendor Expenses summary reports) are temporarily unavailable due to an upstream connector issue. The entity-level data that powers the cash flow forecast — invoices, bills, payments, vendors, journal entries — syncs normally. The forecast doesn't rely on the report views, so this shouldn't block your 13-week model.

Can I build this if I don't use QuickBooks — I'm on Xero or Wave?

Yes. Connect Xero or Wave from Starch's integration catalog; the agent queries them live when your forecast runs. The scheduled sync depth is shallower than QuickBooks (which syncs on a fixed schedule and stores data in Starch), but for most small contractor shops the live query is enough to power the AR and AP sides of the forecast.