MCA cash-flow impact modeling — the 13-week spreadsheet every merchant should build before signing.

Why most merchants skip this step

The broker shows you a payment schedule on a single sheet of paper: $258/day, 252 business days, total payback $65,000. It looks digestible. So you sign.

Three weeks later, payroll lands on a Friday that follows a slow Tuesday, and your bank balance dips below the ACH amount. Now you're paying NSF fees, the funder is calling, and the daily withdrawal you thought was "absorbable" is forcing you to delay vendor checks and pull a personal cash injection.

The 13-week cash-flow model exists specifically to catch this before the contract is signed. Banks require it. Turnaround consultants build it. Most merchants taking MCAs skip it — and that's the single biggest predictor of stacking and default.

The four inputs you need

The 13-week model has four mandatory data inputs. Pull them before you open the spreadsheet:

• Daily deposit history (12 months). Export from your business bank account. You need every business-day deposit so you can identify worst-weeks and seasonal patterns.
• Fixed weekly outflows. Payroll (date, amount, frequency), rent (typically 1st of month), debt service (existing loans, leases, prior MCAs), insurance, sales tax remittance.
• Variable weekly outflows. Food cost / COGS, fuel, vendor checks, credit-card processing fees, utilities. Pull the last three months' actuals.
• The MCA terms. Funded amount, factor, daily or weekly ACH schedule, holdback method (fixed-dollar vs percentage), reconciliation policy.

The model structure — 13 weeks, daily columns

The spreadsheet runs 13 weeks across the top (65 business days). The rows are organized in five blocks:

1. Opening cash position. Today's bank balance plus any pending deposits.
2. Inflows. Daily revenue, broken into card sales (T+1 deposit) and cash (same-day). Model conservatively — use the prior year's same-week figures, not your optimistic forecast.
3. Operating outflows. Payroll on payroll days, rent on the 1st, vendor checks on their actual cycle (not averaged), variable COGS as a percentage of revenue.
4. Debt service. Existing loan payments + the new MCA daily ACH + any other recurring obligations.
5. Closing cash position. Opening + inflows − outflows. This is the line that tells you whether the deal works.

Worked example: a $50,000 / 1.30 MCA on a restaurant

Let's walk through a real model end to end.

• Restaurant: $35,000/month average revenue, $8,000/month net profit pre-MCA, opens 6 days/week
• MCA: $50,000 funded, 1.30 factor, $258/day ACH, 12-month term
• Use of funds: $30K equipment refresh, $15K marketing, $5K cushion

The 13-week model output (summary):

• Week 1–4 (post-funding): Closing cash trends up — the equipment hasn't landed yet so the $50K is sitting in the account, masking the $1,290/week ACH outflow.
• Week 5–8: Equipment paid, marketing spend rolling. Closing cash drops $4–5K per week. Still positive but tightening.
• Week 9 (post-Labor Day): Revenue drops 22% versus prior weeks (typical late-summer trough). MCA daily still pulls full $258. Closing cash position goes negative on Day 4 of Week 9. Owner must inject $3,200 personal funds to avoid NSF.
• Week 10–13: Recovery, but the model shows the same trough will repeat in February.

The model didn't reject the deal — it showed the owner exactly which two weeks per year will require a personal cash bridge or reconciliation request. That's actionable. Without the model, those weeks are a crisis.

The five lines that kill deals

When you build the model, watch for these five red flags in the output:

• Closing cash goes negative in any week. The deal is too big. Negotiate a smaller advance or longer term.
• Closing cash drops below 2 weeks of operating expenses at any point. You have no buffer. One bad week breaks you.
• Daily ACH exceeds 12% of average daily revenue. Most funders cap here because beyond that, NSF rates spike. If your model shows 15%+, the deal is structured wrong.
• The model only works if revenue grows. If your closing cash position requires 10%+ revenue growth to stay positive, you're betting on a forecast. Bad bet.
• Payroll week (every other Friday) shows balance under $2K. Payroll bouncing is a business-ending event. Build the model so payroll always clears with $5K+ of cushion.

What to do with the model output

The model produces four possible answers:

• Green: closing cash never drops below 4 weeks of expenses. Take the deal. You have margin for the unexpected.
• Yellow: closing cash dips to 2–4 weeks of expenses in 1–2 specific weeks. Take the deal IF those weeks align with predictable seasonal troughs and you have a reconciliation clause or personal capital available.
• Orange: closing cash drops below 2 weeks of expenses in any week. Renegotiate. Ask for a smaller advance, a longer term, or weekly ACH instead of daily.
• Red: closing cash goes negative. Decline. The math says this deal will default or force stacking. Walk away.

Reconciliation modeling

If your funder offers true reconciliation (lower revenue = lower ACH on request), the model gets a second scenario. Add a column that recalculates the daily ACH as a percentage of actual revenue (typically 8–12%) instead of a fixed dollar.

Reality check: most funders advertise reconciliation but make it administratively difficult. Realistic modeling assumes you'll request it 2–3 times per year, get it honored 60% of the time, with a 1–2 week processing lag. Run the model both ways and use the more conservative answer.

What banks and turnaround consultants do differently

Professional cash-flow modeling adds a few sophistications most merchants skip but should consider:

• Day-of-week effects. Restaurants, retail, and service businesses have strong day-of-week revenue patterns. Don't average — model Tuesday revenue separately from Saturday revenue.
• Holiday adjustments. The week of July 4th, the week of Thanksgiving, the first week of January all behave differently. Pull the actual prior-year deposit data for those weeks.
• Vendor terms. Net-30 vendor terms create a 30-day cycle of large outflows. If you're on net-30 with food vendors, every fourth week is a payment week. Model that.
• Sales-tax cycle. Quarterly sales-tax remittance is a large lumpy outflow that catches merchants off-guard. Build it in.

Tools for building the model

Google Sheets or Excel are fine. Pull bank data via CSV from your business bank account (most banks support this). If you're on QuickBooks or Xero, the cash-flow forecast features can scaffold the model — but verify the MCA daily ACH line manually because accounting software often miscategorizes it.

Allow yourself 2–3 hours the first time you build it. After that, refreshing the model for each new funding decision is a 30-minute exercise. It is the single highest-leverage financial discipline a merchant taking MCAs can adopt.