Finance & FP&A

How to build a 13-week cash flow forecast as CPG Founders

Finance & FP&AFor CPG Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your 13-week cash flow forecast lives in a Google Sheet you built at 11pm six months ago. Every Monday you're manually pulling Plaid transactions into it, copy-pasting Stripe payouts, and trying to remember which co-packer invoice is due when. The numbers are always a week stale by the time you look at them. Worse, CPG cash cycles are lumpy — a Whole Foods Regional deduction hits three months after the PO, your co-packer deposit is due 90 days before the product ships, and your FBA restock has to go in before you've collected from last quarter's retail sell-through. A static spreadsheet can't model that timing. You end up finding out you have a problem when the bank account says so.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Finance & FP&AFor CPG Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live 13-week cash flow dashboard that pulls actual bank transactions and Stripe revenue on a daily sync — no manual uploads, no waiting for your bookkeeper

Side-by-side scenario models showing what your runway looks like if your next Costco Road Show gets delayed, your co-packer raises MOQs, or your DTC revenue grows 15% slower than plan

Automated weekly spend anomaly alerts so surprise charges from a new distributor, logistics broker, or co-packer don't hide in your bank feed for a month

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 Plaid bank account data and Stripe charges, customers, and payouts on a schedule — both update daily and live in Starch's database so every app you build pulls from the same current numbers. No manual exports required. If you use QuickBooks for your books, Starch also syncs your bills, invoices, vendor records, and journal entries on a schedule so your accruals and outstanding payables are reflected in the forecast, not just cash-basis transactions.

Prompts to copy

Build me a 13-week cash flow forecast using my Plaid bank transactions and Stripe payouts. Show weekly net cash position, expected inflows from DTC and wholesale, and flag any weeks where my ending balance drops below $80,000.

Create three scenarios: (1) baseline as-is, (2) Costco Road Show delayed by 8 weeks reducing revenue by $140,000, (3) co-packer deposit moves up 30 days adding $60,000 in week-4 outflows. Show runway and lowest cash week for each.

Show me every transaction from the last 60 days grouped by vendor type — co-packer, freight, Amazon fees, distributor deductions, and SaaS. Flag any vendor that charged more than 20% above their 90-day average.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your business checking and operating accounts through Plaid's scheduled sync. If you run a separate account for FBA proceeds or co-packer prepayments, connect that too — the forecast is only as good as the accounts it sees.

2 Connect Stripe so your DTC Shopify payouts and any direct subscription revenue feed into the same data layer. Starch syncs charges, invoices, and payouts on a schedule.

3 Open the Runway Analysis starter app and tell Starch: 'Show my 13-week cash position by week, with inflows broken out by Stripe DTC, Stripe wholesale, and all other deposits, and outflows broken out by co-packer, freight and 3PL, distributor fees, Amazon seller fees, payroll, and SaaS.' Starch builds the view from your connected data.

4 Add your known future commitments that aren't in the bank feed yet — co-packer deposits, upcoming PO payments, quarterly insurance premiums. Tell Starch: 'Add a manual scheduled outflow of $45,000 on [date] labeled co-packer deposit for Q3 production run.'

5 Wire in QuickBooks if you have it — Starch syncs your open bills and outstanding invoices so the forecast includes payables that haven't hit the bank yet, not just cleared transactions.

6 Open the Scenario Analysis app and build your base case first. Tell Starch: 'Set the baseline using my actual Plaid and Stripe data for the last 12 weeks as the run rate, then project forward 13 weeks.'

7 Fork the baseline into CPG-specific stress scenarios: delayed retail payment (a regional chain pushes net-90 to net-120), production cost increase (co-packer raises per-unit cost 8%), or an FBA restock requirement that pulls $75,000 forward by three weeks. Each scenario shows your lowest cash week and when you'd hit a defined floor.

8 Open Transaction Insights and tell Starch: 'Group my last 90 days of Plaid transactions by vendor and flag any new payees that appeared in the last 30 days or any recurring vendor whose charge increased more than 15% month-over-month.' This catches distributor deductions miscategorized as fees, duplicate SaaS charges, and freight cost creep before they corrupt the forecast.

9 Set up a weekly automation: 'Every Monday at 7am, refresh my 13-week cash flow forecast, compare projected vs actual ending balance for last week, and Slack me a summary with any weeks in the next 13 where projected cash drops below $80,000.' Starch triggers this from Google Calendar cadence and posts to Slack — no API needed for the Slack message delivery.

10 Review the lowest-cash week in your primary scenario against your credit line or fundraising timeline. If the trough is within 10 weeks, you have an actionable lead time. If it's beyond 20, you have room to delay a raise or accelerate a Costco pitch without burning your cushion.

11 Share a read-only link to the Runway Analysis dashboard with your CFO-on-retainer, your accountant, or your lead investor for their weekly check-in — no Excel attachment, no 'here's the latest version' email thread.

12 When your books are closed each month, tell Starch: 'Update the actuals through [month-end] and recalculate the 13-week forward projection from that anchor point.' The model resets from reality, not from a stale baseline.

See this running on Starch

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

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

April 2026 Cash Flow Review — 8-SKU Better-For-You Snack Brand

Sample numbers from a real run

Opening cash (April 7)	312,000
DTC Shopify / Stripe payouts (weeks 1-13)	198,000
Whole Foods Regional invoice (net-60, due May 15)	84,000
Amazon FBA payout (bi-weekly, 6 payments)	112,000
Co-packer deposit — Q3 production run (due April 22)	-95,000
Freight and 3PL fees (13 weeks)	-41,000
Amazon seller fees and FBA storage (13 weeks)	-28,000
Payroll and contractor payments (13 weeks)	-67,000
SaaS and recurring vendors (13 weeks)	-14,000
Projected ending cash (July 7)	461,000

When the Transaction Insights app ran on April 7, it flagged a $14,200 charge from a freight broker that was $9,800 above that vendor's 90-day average — it turned out to be a fuel surcharge added without notice. That alone would have made week 3 look healthier than it was. After correcting the run rate, the Runway Analysis dashboard showed the lowest cash week falls in week 5 (April 28), dropping to $198,000 — the $95,000 co-packer deposit lands before the Whole Foods net-60 invoice clears. The Scenario Analysis model then tested what happens if Whole Foods pushes payment to net-75: week-5 trough drops to $114,000, still above the $80,000 floor but tight enough to warrant drawing $100,000 on the credit line as a precaution. The founder used the dashboard link in her Monday investor update instead of attaching an Excel file, and her lead investor flagged the freight cost trend independently from the same view.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Lowest projected cash week in the 13-week window and the date it occurs

Actual vs projected ending cash balance each week (variance tracks forecast accuracy)

Days of runway at current net burn, updated daily from Plaid + Stripe sync

Co-packer and freight spend as % of gross revenue, trended over 90 days

Number of weeks until projected cash floor breach at $X threshold (operator-defined)

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Google Sheets + manual Plaid/Stripe export

Free and fully flexible, but every week you're the data pipeline — pulling exports, pasting them in, hoping the formula didn't break. One missed co-packer invoice and the whole forecast is wrong by $80,000.

Float or Pulse

Purpose-built cash flow tools with clean UIs, but they don't layer in scenario modeling, spend anomaly detection, or the ability to describe a custom CPG-specific view and have it built for you — you're constrained to their template.

QuickBooks Cash Flow Planner

Native to QuickBooks so your actuals feed in, but it's a single-scenario, single-account view with no way to model a co-packer deposit moving forward 30 days or a retail payment stretching to net-120.

Mosaic or Runway.com

Excellent for Series A+ teams with a finance hire, but pricing and onboarding are designed for companies with dedicated FP&A — overkill if you're a two-person team who just needs the 13-week number to not be a lie.

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

Does Starch actually sync my bank transactions automatically, or do I have to upload a CSV every week?

Starch syncs your Plaid-connected bank accounts on a schedule — transactions, balances, and categorization update daily without you touching anything. The forecast recalculates from live data every time you open it.

My co-packer invoices and distributor POs aren't in Stripe or Plaid yet — they're commitments, not cleared transactions. Can the forecast include them?

Yes. You tell Starch about expected future outflows in plain language — 'add a $95,000 outflow on April 22 labeled co-packer deposit' — and it adds them as scheduled line items in the forward projection. If you use QuickBooks, Starch also syncs your open bills so outstanding payables flow in automatically.

Can I model a scenario where a big retail payment is 30 days late without rebuilding the whole forecast?

That's exactly what the Scenario Analysis app is for. Describe the assumption change — 'move the $84,000 Whole Foods invoice from May 15 to June 14' — and Starch recalculates the scenario and shows you the new lowest-cash week alongside your baseline.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? I'm nervous about connecting my bank accounts.

Starch is not yet SOC 2 Type II certified — that's an honest answer and worth knowing. Bank connections use Plaid's OAuth flow, so your credentials never pass through Starch directly. But if SOC 2 certification is a hard requirement for your team or your board, that's a real limitation today.

I use Xero, not QuickBooks. Can Starch pull my open bills?

Xero is available through Starch's integration catalog — connect it and the agent queries your bills and invoices live when your forecast runs. It's not a scheduled daily sync the way QuickBooks is, but for pulling open payables into a 13-week model it works fine.

What if some of my revenue comes through Shopify payouts to a bank account, not directly through Stripe?

Shopify payouts land in your bank account, which Plaid picks up as deposits. You tell Starch how to categorize them — 'any deposit from Shopify Payments label as DTC revenue' — and they show up correctly in the inflow breakdown. If you want to pull gross order data before the payout, connect Shopify from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live.

Can I share this dashboard with my accountant or investor without giving them access to everything?

You can share a read-only link to specific apps. Your investor sees the runway dashboard; they don't get access to your other Starch apps or raw bank data.