Cash flow problems in construction are structural, not situational. The P&L says profitable. The bank says otherwise. The gap lives in billing timing, overhead rate, retainage, and pay-when-paid terms — none of which show up on a standard income statement. This hub connects everything SPM has built on construction cash flow — forecasting tools, trade-specific guides, problem diagnosis pages, and the systems that actually fix it.
Cash flow touches every part of your financial system. Start with the feast or famine page if you're trying to understand the cycle, the 13-week forecast if you need a system now, or the trade-specific cash flow page for your trade. All paths lead to the same fix: visibility before the problem hits.
The root cause is almost always one of three things: billing timing doesn't match cash inflow, overhead rate is too low to cover the real cost of operations, or there's no real-time job cost visibility so problems compound before anyone notices. The P&L often shows profitable because revenue recognition and actual cash receipt are on completely different timelines in construction. The gap between those two lines is where cash flow problems live.
A 13-week cash flow forecast maps every expected cash inflow (pay app receipts, retainage releases, deposit refunds) and outflow (payroll, AP, equipment payments, overhead) across a 90-day rolling window. Built around your actual billing cycles, it shows you gaps before they arrive — giving you time to accelerate billing, draw the LOC, or delay a discretionary purchase. Most subcontractors don't have one and make cash decisions based on their bank balance, which reflects what happened 30–60 days ago.
Retainage held at 5–10% of every pay app means 5–10% of your revenue is locked up until job completion — which could be 12–18 months away. On a $2M job, that's $100K–$200K working for your GC instead of you. Most subcontractors don't model retainage timing in their cash flow forecasting, which means retainage release dates arrive as positive surprises instead of planned receipts. A 13-week forecast built around actual retainage terms changes that.
Schedule a free call. We'll build the 13-week forecast and show you exactly where your gaps are coming from.
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