The Five-Minute Cash Routine: Weekly Cash Reports, a 90-Day Reserve, and When to Open a Line of Credit

Most owners check cash by opening the banking app and reading one number. That number lies. It knows nothing about Tuesday's payroll, the supply house statement due on the 10th, or the $10,200 parked in your 90-day receivables column. A weekly cash report is the correction, and once the template exists it takes about 5 minutes on a Friday afternoon.

Ruth King has been making a version of this argument in her finance columns for HVACR Business for years. In "Achieve Your Freedom with Your Financially Fit Business, Part 6," published April 29, 2024, she lists five cash procedures for contractors, and the first is logging into every bank account every day: operations, payroll, savings, and the line of credit. "It takes less than five minutes a day," King wrote. Her reason is theft prevention, internal and external, more than forecasting. She also publishes a weekly cash report template meant to land on the owner's desk every Friday, paired with aged receivables and aged payables.

That column ran when prime sat at 8.50%. It doesn't anymore, and the change is big enough to alter what you do with the report once you have it.

Prime at 6.75% changes the answer, not the discipline

The Federal Reserve's H.15 release covering September 8 to 14, 2026 puts the bank prime loan rate at 6.75% and the effective federal funds rate at 3.63%. Prime has held 6.75% since December 11, 2025, down from the 8.50% peak it carried from July 2023. It is still more than double the 3.25% that ran from March 2020 through March 2022, which is the rate most owners remember from the last time they signed anything.

Lenders got pickier while the rate came down. In the Federal Reserve's Small Business Credit Survey, which reports 2024 responses from 7,653 employer firms, 41% of firms denied or only partially approved said too much existing debt was a reason, up from 22% in 2021. Half the sample, 51%, reported uneven cash flow, and 56% reported trouble paying operating expenses. Among firms that applied for a loan, line of credit or cash advance, 41% received everything they asked for, 36% received part of it, and 24% got nothing.

The time to apply is while the report is boring.

What actually goes on a weekly cash report

Five lines, on one page, produced by whoever does your books before they leave on Friday.

Total cash across every account at close, cash collected this week, cash paid out this week, everything committed over the next 14 days, and receivables past 60 days.

That fourth line is the one nobody runs, and it is the entire point. A bank balance is a static photograph, but committed cash shows the motion.

Consider an example shop, a three-truck appliance and HVAC operation doing roughly $1.35 million a year, reporting on a mid-November Friday.

Line	Amount
Cash in all accounts at Friday close	$121,700
Collected this week	$31,400
Paid out this week	$27,900
Committed, next 14 days	$54,140
A/R over 60 days	$19,800

The $121,700 breaks into $41,200 in operating, $18,500 in payroll, and $62,000 in a separate reserve account this owner does not touch. So the spendable figure is $59,700, not $121,700.

Every number on the committed line comes from a document rather than memory: two payroll runs at $16,800 each including employer taxes, a supply house statement of $11,300 due on the 10th, $3,400 rent, three truck notes at $780, a $1,900 insurance installment, and $1,600 in fuel cards. That totals $54,140. Subtract it from $59,700 and the shop clears the next two weeks by $5,560 before a single new dollar comes in.

That is $5,560 of room on $1.35 million of annual revenue. One warranty claim that pays late and that cushion is gone.

Total A/R is $88,400: $51,700 current, $16,900 at 31 to 60 days, $9,600 at 61 to 90, and $10,200 past 90. That last bucket is 11.5% of the book. Brandon Bolen, who works with service contractors at Live Oak Bank, wrote in HVACR Business that when more than 10% of accounts run past 90 days, it signals a poor-quality customer base. That is a buyer's screen, applied during due diligence. Applying it to yourself every Friday costs nothing.

The 90-day reserve, defined so you can actually hit it

Three months of revenue is the standard advice. For this shop that is about $337,000, and no three-truck operation reaches it from a standing start.

Set the target against the bills that keep arriving when the phone stops instead. Rent, insurance, truck notes, software and phones, office payroll, and the owner's own draw come to roughly $20,140 a month here. Ninety days of that is $60,420. The shop is holding $62,000, which means it can survive a dead January without borrowing or skipping a draw.

Fund it out of collections, not profit. A fixed percentage of every deposit, swept the same day, gets there faster than a monthly decision does.

Size the line of credit before you need it

Two ways to size a revolver, and they land close together. One payroll cycle plus your largest supplier statement is $16,800 plus $11,300, so $28,100. Your 61-day-and-older receivables are $19,800, money you already earned and already paid technicians to produce. Ask for $50,000 and you have room on both.

At prime plus two points, call it 8.75%, drawing $25,000 for 45 days costs about $270. That is the number to hold up against any merchant cash advance offer.

It also works in the other direction. Borrowing $11,300 for 20 days to take a 2%/10 net 30 supplier discount costs roughly $54 in interest and saves $226 off the statement. Do that 12 times a year and the line pays for itself, assuming your supplier offers those terms in writing.

If a bank line is not available, the SBA's 7(a) program allows working capital as an eligible use, caps out at $5 million, and carries an SBA guarantee of 85% on loans of $150,000 or less and 75% above that. The 7(a) Working Capital Pilot sets rate ceilings by size, from base rate plus 6.5% on amounts up to $50,000 down to base plus 3.0% above $350,000. If prime is your lender's base rate, that is 13.25% at the small end and 9.75% at the large end. Cheaper than most alternatives at this size, and slower to close.

The accounts that pay late, and the payments that never land

Home warranty companies and property management firms are where a repair shop's receivables go to sit. They pay eventually, but never on your schedule, and they will let an unauthorized ticket age forever. Get the authorization number before the tech opens a panel, submit the claim the same day, and get the payment cycle in writing so you know whether the clock starts at service or at claim approval. Our guide to home warranty work economics prices in that delay, and the same documentation habit is what saves you on add-on work and change orders.

Block 30 minutes on Friday and call every account past 45 days, largest balance first, and don't let an email stand in for the call.

Instant-pay tools help here and create a new gap. Text-to-pay collected in a driveway at 4 p.m. shortens the cash cycle by weeks. But those funds sit at the processor until someone reconciles them, instant transfer carries a fee your processor discloses, and a field-collected payment with no same-day receipt trail is exactly the leak King's daily bank check is built to catch. If your techs take payment on site, the deposit report and the work order list should match every day. Our piece on money lessons from a repair business owner makes the same point from the other end, after the loss.

One thing to settle before you sign a line: ask what the annual renewal fee is, whether the bank charges anything on the unused portion, and whether a personal guarantee is required. Those terms differ by lender, and they are far easier to argue about at origination than at renewal.

Sources

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2026). "Selected Interest Rates (Daily) - H.15," release of September 15, 2026, covering September 8-14, 2026. Federal Reserve H.15

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. "Bank Prime Loan Rate Changes: Historical Dates of Changes and Rates (PRIME)." FRED. Historical prime rate series

Federal Reserve Banks. (2025). "2025 Report on Employer Firms," Small Business Credit Survey (2024 data, 7,653 employer firms). Fed Small Business

U.S. Small Business Administration. "7(a) Loans." SBA.gov

King, Ruth. (2024). "Achieve Your Freedom with Your Financially Fit Business, Part 6." HVACR Business, April 29, 2024. HVACR Business

King, Ruth. (2022). "Weekly Cash Report PDF Download." HVACR Business, May 5, 2022. HVACR Business

Bolen, Brandon. (2023). "Buying a Business: Due Diligence Checklist." HVACR Business, November 1, 2023. HVACR Business