Written for owners of independent stores and small chains in the US: convenience and grocery, liquor and smoke shops, fashion, gifts, hardware, and garden and farm stores.
The short version
- Forecast cash weekly for the next 13 weeks.Include card deposit delays, vendor payments and holiday deposits, rent and CAM on the 1st, payroll and loan payments. Redo it weekly, October to January.
- Treat sales tax collected as the state's money.Post it daily to a liability account, money you owe, and put each return in the forecast on its real due date.
- Arrange a line of credit before the buy.You pay for holiday inventory months before it sells. Set up the line before the holiday buy, not after.
A store pays for the holidays months before shoppers arrive. Holiday inventory is paid for 60 to 120 days before it sells, rent and CAM fall on the 1st, and the sales tax you collect in your best quarter goes to the state afterward. A healthy-looking October balance can be negative by the end of December.
What goes in a store's 13-week forecast
- Sales by tender, with the deposit lag: cards take 1 to 2 business days.
- Vendor payments by their terms, including deposits on holiday orders.
- Rent and CAM on the 1st of each month.
- Payroll.
- Sales tax returns on their real dates: Texas and Florida monthly by the 20th of the next month, New York quarterly by March 20, June 20, September 20 and December 20, and California quarterly by the last day of the month after the quarter. It is cash you collected for the state, never yours to spend. As of Oct 2026.
- Loan payments.
- A minimum cash line you plan never to go below.
Re-forecast every week from October to January, and buy 8 to 16 weeks ahead of each peak: back to school, Halloween, Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, the December holidays, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day.
| Cash on October 1 | $22,000 |
| October to December sales, after payroll and vendors | $38,000 |
| Rent and CAM, 3 x $6,500 | -$19,500 |
| Holiday inventory deposits, October and November | -$41,000 |
| Cash before the January sales tax payment | -$500 |
| After the quarterly sales tax due in January | -$9,500 |
minus $500, less $9,000 of sales tax = minus $9,500Two ways out: cut the second inventory drop, or arrange a line of credit by mid-October. This store pays the whole quarter's tax in January. Many stores pay sooner: a monthly filer in Texas or Florida pays October's tax in November and November's in December, and a New York quarterly filer pays its September to November tax by December 20, so the gap opens earlier.
Sales tax is cash already collected for the state. Spending it turns a timing gap into a tax debt.
If you need to borrow
Lines of credit and SBA 7(a) variable loans are priced off prime, which has been 7.00% since September 17, 2026. SBA 7(a) loans fund inventory, build-out and store purchases. To qualify, the business must be 100% owned, directly and indirectly, by U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals whose principal residence is in the United States; green card holders have been ineligible since March 1, 2026. As of Oct 2026.
A merchant cash advance is a sale of your future receivables, priced as a factor, not an interest rate. Several states now require disclosures on covered offers: California and New York require an estimated APR, while Florida and, for online offers, Texas require the finance charge and total repayment but not an APR. As of Oct 2026.
| Advance received | $30,000 |
| Cost of the advance (factor 1.35) | $10,500 |
| Total repaid | $40,500 |
| Split from card sales each month | $6,000 |
12% of $50,000 monthly card sales; $40,500 / $6,000 = 6.75 months to repaySo $10,500 buys about 7 months' money. Compare an SBA Express loan or a bank line first.
Insure the peak, not the average month. If your inventory limit is below the coinsurance percentage of what you hold in November, a coinsurance clause cuts the claim. For example, a toy store that insured $60,000 of inventory under an 80% coinsurance clause, with $100,000 on hand, is paid $22,500 on a $30,000 water loss, before the deductible. Ask your broker for a peak season endorsement.
Asked in Greymill
Cash on October 1: $22,000
Sales after payroll and vendors: plus $38,000
Rent and CAM, 3 x $6,500: minus $19,500
Holiday deposits: minus $41,000
End of December: minus $500
January sales tax: minus $9,000
After that: minus $9,500
The trap: that $9,000 is the state's money, never yours. Pay vendors with it and a timing gap becomes a tax debt.
Post sales tax to a liability account every day, so the forecast never counts it as spendable cash.
Two ways out: cut the second inventory drop, or arrange a line of credit by mid-October.
Want me to build the full 13-week forecast so you can see your lowest week?
Ask it about your own business
Paste this into Greymill with your own figures, and Cash & Profit works it through for your business.
I run a shop in [state], in the US. Build me a 13-week cash flow from [date]. Cash today is [$]. Weekly sales are about [$], [x]% of them on cards. Rent and CAM are [$] on the 1st, I collect about [$] of sales tax a [month or quarter], due on [date], and holiday inventory deposits of [$] are due on [dates]. Show me the lowest week and the cheapest way to cover it.
More for shops and physical retail in the US
- Am I really making the margin I think, after markdowns?Margin versus markup, pricing from a target margin, what a markdown really costs, and working out open-to-buy before you order.Read the lesson
- Do I charge sales tax on candy, soda and clothing?Grocery exemptions and the items that stay taxable, clothing rules, resale certificates and use tax, and what to do if the POS has been wrong.Read the lesson
- Selling alcohol, tobacco, vapes and hemp without losing a licenseAge 21 for alcohol and tobacco, pseudoephedrine limits, which vapes you can legally sell, why hemp is a moving target, SNAP, and what to do after a failed sting.Read the lesson
- Signing a store lease without overpaying on CAM and percentage rentNNN, CAM caps and audits, percentage rent breakpoints, co-tenancy and guaranties: the clauses that decide what a store really pays, and what to do when a notice arrives.Read the lesson
- Schedules, teenage stockers and staff who chase shopliftersRetail scheduling laws, the federal limits on 14 and 15-year-olds, commission pay, and why staff must never try to stop a thief.Read the lesson
- A customer says my card fee or gift card is illegalCard surcharges, dual pricing, gift card expiration dates and refund signs: where stores get caught, state by state.Read the lesson
Open the interactive lesson · Every shops and physical retail lesson · What Greymill knows about the trade
Sources
The primary sources behind this lesson, checked Oct 2026.
- SOP 50 10 8.1 Ch. 1 Para. F; Appendix 3; IN 5000-880695 (Cash, SBA loans and merchant cash advances)
- Cal. Fin. Code 22800 and following (APR at 22802); NY Financial Services Law Article 8 (s.803); Fla. Stat. 559.9613 (disclosures; no APR) (Cash, SBA loans and merchant cash advances)
- due dates (The us calendar: payroll, sales tax, SNAP, licenses and trading peaks)
- IRC 7503 (The us calendar: payroll, sales tax, SNAP, licenses and trading peaks)
- 29 CFR 570.35(a)(6) (Cash, people and crime hard cases)
- NRF National Retail Security Survey 2023 (September 2023), key findings (MARKET figures and rates, sourced and dated)
- later NRF security reports (MARKET figures and rates, sourced and dated)
- report key findings (MARKET figures and rates, sourced and dated)
- MRTS, ARTS (MARKET figures and rates, sourced and dated)
- H.15; NY Fed SOFR (MARKET figures and rates, sourced and dated)
- FOMC 2026 meeting calendar (MARKET figures and rates, sourced and dated)
- NFIP coverage limits (INSURANCE and risk)
- Alco. Bev. Code 2.02, 106.14 (INSURANCE and risk)
- PCI DSS v4.0.1 (INSURANCE and risk)