Finance & FP&A

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

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

You're running 13-week cash flow out of an Excel model you built two years ago. Every Monday you're manually pulling bank statements from two operating accounts, copying rent receipts from your property management software, estimating the contractor draws you haven't invoiced yet, and hoping your bookkeeper closed last month before you need the actuals. By the time the model is updated it's Wednesday, the numbers are already stale, and you still can't answer the question your LP asked on Friday: 'Do we have enough liquidity to fund the Westside acquisition and cover CapEx on the Phoenix portfolio at the same time?' The spreadsheet says maybe. You need a real answer.

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

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live 13-week cash flow dashboard that pulls directly from your Plaid bank feeds daily — no manual exports, no waiting on your bookkeeper to close

A side-by-side scenario model showing what happens to your runway if the Phoenix CapEx runs 20% over budget or if the Westside close slips six weeks

Automated weekly spending summaries that flag unexpected vendor charges and new payees before they surprise you on a Friday LP call

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 on a schedule — transactions, balances, and categorized spend flow in automatically each day without manual exports. Stripe connects directly if you collect any payments or subscription revenue. QuickBooks entity-level data (invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries) also syncs on a schedule and feeds the scenario baseline. No spreadsheet uploads required.

Prompts to copy

Build me a 13-week cash flow forecast pulling from my Plaid accounts. Separate operating cash (rent collections, property management fees, HOA receivables) from capital transactions (acquisition draws, lender payoffs, CapEx disbursements). Show net weekly cash position and flag any week where my balance drops below $250,000.

Create a scenario model with three cases: Base (current burn and rent roll), Delay (Westside close slips 6 weeks and I carry the bridge loan an extra month), and Overrun (Phoenix CapEx comes in 20% over the $480,000 budget). Show me runway and ending cash for each case.

Set up a spending dashboard that monitors all transactions across my Plaid accounts, flags any new vendor that appears in the last 60 days, and alerts me when a recurring charge — like my property management software or insurance premiums — increases by more than 10% month over month.

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

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect your operating and capital accounts in Plaid through Starch — Starch syncs your Plaid data on a schedule, so every morning your bank balances and posted transactions are already in the system before you open your laptop.

2 Connect QuickBooks from Starch — Starch syncs your QuickBooks invoices, bills, vendor payments, and journal entries on a schedule, giving you the accrual-basis layer on top of your cash transactions.

3 Open the Runway Analysis app from the Starch App Store — it gives you a starting point with burn rate, 24-month forward projections, and expense breakdowns by category. Tell Starch to customize it for real estate: separate rent roll collections from capital account activity, and add a weekly net cash position view instead of just monthly.

4 Tell Starch: 'Label transactions from [your lender] as debt service, transactions tagged construction as CapEx draws, and everything from [your PM software] as property management expense.' Starch applies those rules going forward so your categories stay clean without manual tagging.

5 Set your 13-week forecast horizon and your minimum liquidity threshold — for most real estate operators this is a hard floor tied to your loan covenant or your LP agreement. Starch flags any projected week that dips below that number.

6 Open the Scenario Analysis app and set your baseline from the same Plaid and QuickBooks connections. Then build the Delay scenario: tell Starch 'push all Westside acquisition-related outflows back six weeks and add $28,000 in additional bridge loan carrying costs.' Starch recalculates runway and ending cash for that case instantly.

7 Build the Overrun scenario: 'Increase Phoenix CapEx from $480,000 to $576,000, spread the extra $96,000 across weeks 6 through 11 of the forecast.' Now you have a side-by-side view of Base, Delay, and Overrun without touching a spreadsheet.

8 Open the Transaction Insights app and tell Starch: 'Flag any vendor that charged my accounts for the first time in the last 60 days, and alert me if any recurring charge increases more than 10% compared to the prior month.' This catches the insurance premium renewal, the software price increase, and the contractor who started billing before the work order was signed.

9 Set a Monday morning automation: 'Every Monday at 7am, pull the updated 13-week cash position, compare it to last week's forecast, summarize any weeks where actuals deviated from forecast by more than $50,000, and send me a Slack message with the summary.' Now your week starts with variance analysis already done.

10 Before any LP or lender call, tell Starch: 'Generate a one-page cash flow summary for the next 13 weeks showing starting balance, weekly inflows by source (rent, reimbursements, loan proceeds), weekly outflows by category (debt service, CapEx, OpEx), and ending balance for each week.' Export it as a table you can paste into your investor deck or email directly.

11 When a deal timeline shifts — a close date moves, a lender extends the draw schedule, a tenant delays their first rent payment — update one assumption in the Scenario Analysis app and all three cases reprice immediately. No rebuilding formulas.

12 Review your KPIs weekly: weeks of liquidity remaining, net cash burn vs. prior week, largest single outflow projected in the next 30 days, and percentage of projected inflows from signed leases vs. projected. These four numbers answer 90% of the questions your investors and lenders will ask.

See this running on Starch

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Worked example

Westside Acquisition Week — March 2026

Sample numbers from a real run

Operating account — rent collections (18 units)	54,000
Operating account — property management fees paid out	-8,100
Operating account — insurance premiums (Q1 installment)	-12,400
Capital account — bridge loan draw (Westside)	1,200,000
Capital account — acquisition close (Westside)	-1,850,000
Capital account — Phoenix CapEx draw (week 3 of 8)	-60,000
Capital account — lender payoff (refi proceeds)	680,000
Ending 13-week projected minimum balance (week 9)	218,000

In the first week of March, the Westside close hits simultaneously with the third Phoenix CapEx draw and the Q1 insurance installment. The Runway Analysis dashboard — pulling live from Plaid — shows the capital account dropping to $218,000 at the projected trough in week 9, which is below the $250,000 floor set in the LP agreement. Without the forecast, you'd have found that out when the statement closed. With Starch, you saw it on Monday morning. You ran the Delay scenario — what if the bridge loan draw comes in one week late? — and the trough moves to $194,000, which is worse. So instead you called your lender on Tuesday to confirm the draw timing, confirmed the Phoenix contractor can wait on the week-4 draw until week 5, and the trough came back to $261,000 in the updated model. The LP call on Thursday was straightforward: you shared the 13-week table, showed all three scenarios, and answered the liquidity question before it was asked.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Weeks of liquidity remaining at current net burn (hard floor vs. LP covenant threshold)

Projected trough balance across the 13-week window — the single number lenders and LPs actually care about

Variance between forecasted and actual weekly cash position (catches slipped closes and delayed draws early)

CapEx draw pacing vs. approved budget by property (Phoenix at $480K budget; are draws tracking to schedule?)

Rent collection rate as a percentage of scheduled rent roll — your primary inflow signal for the operating account

Comparison

What this replaces

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

Excel / Google Sheets cash flow model

Gives you full control over every formula, but you're spending 2-3 hours every Monday pulling bank exports, updating actuals, and rebuilding scenarios by hand — and the model is stale by Wednesday.

QuickBooks + manual reporting

Great for historical books and vendor payments, but QuickBooks doesn't give you a 13-week forward cash position or scenario modeling — you'd need to export and build that separately.

Juniper Square

Purpose-built for real estate fund accounting and investor reporting, but it's designed for fund-level LP communications, not daily operational cash flow forecasting across your own operating and capital accounts.

Mosaic or Runway.com

Strong SaaS-company financial planning tools, but built around headcount and subscription revenue models — not property-level rent rolls, CapEx draw schedules, or lender covenant floors.

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 pull from my bank accounts automatically, or do I have to upload statements?

Starch syncs your Plaid data on a schedule — transactions and balances come in automatically each day. You don't upload anything. If you have accounts at multiple banks, you connect each one through Plaid and they all flow into the same dashboard.

My QuickBooks is always a few weeks behind because my bookkeeper closes on her own schedule. Will that break the forecast?

No. Starch syncs your QuickBooks entity-level data — invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries — on a schedule independently of when your bookkeeper closes. The cash flow forecast pulls from Plaid for real-time actuals and from QuickBooks for accrual-basis context. If QuickBooks is behind, the Plaid layer still gives you current cash positions. One honest limit: QuickBooks report views like P&L summaries are temporarily unavailable due to a connector issue, but entity-level data syncs normally.

Can I model a specific property acquisition — not just overall company burn?

Yes. Tell Starch to segment your forecast by account or transaction label. For example: 'Show capital account activity separately from the operating account, and tag all Westside-related transactions as a separate line item in the forecast.' Starch applies those rules going forward. The scenarios in the Scenario Analysis app can also be built around deal-specific assumptions — just describe the cash flows for that transaction.

Is Starch SOC 2 Type II certified? My LP wants to know before I connect bank accounts.

Not yet — Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. That's worth knowing before you connect sensitive accounts. Starch uses Plaid for bank connections, which has its own security certifications, but Starch itself hasn't completed the SOC 2 Type II audit process yet.

What if I use a property management platform like AppFolio or Buildium for rent collections — can those feed in?

AppFolio and Buildium aren't on Starch's scheduled-sync list. However, both are web-based platforms you can log into, so Starch can automate them through your browser — no API needed. Tell Starch 'pull this week's rent collection summary from AppFolio and add it as a line item in my cash inflow forecast.' The browser automation handles the login and extraction. For the most reliable setup, many real estate operators also just let all collections flow through a dedicated bank account that Plaid captures directly.

Can I share the 13-week forecast with my LP or lender without giving them Starch access?

Yes. Tell Starch to generate a formatted cash flow table for any date range, then export or copy it into your LP update email or investor deck. You can also set up an automated weekly export — 'every Friday, generate the 13-week cash position table and email it to [LP contact]' — using Gmail, which Starch connects to directly.