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Catastrophe (CAT) work can pay well, and it can also bury you. What decides it is whether you can fund the float before the first payment lands. This calculator runs the cash-flow math, your mobilization cost, daily burn, cash runway, and days to first payment, then applies a stated rule that turns those four numbers into a go, a caution, or a no-go.

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Three ways to use this calculator

• On a computer: run it right below. Five inputs, and the coverage ratio and the verdict update as you type.
• On a phone, or to keep your numbers: make your own copy in Google Sheets.
• No Google account? Download it for Excel and open it in Excel or any spreadsheet app. </aside>

https://gem-resource-hub-calculators.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/cat-go-no-go/index.html

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Not advice, and not a recommendation to deploy. This calculator is educational only. It is not financial, accounting, legal, or business advice. The rule below is this calculator's own stated rule applied to the figures you type in, and the result reflects only those figures. It is not a recommendation to mobilize or deploy. The decision to deploy to a catastrophe event is yours alone; confirm your numbers, cash position, access to credit, and licensing with your own financial and legal advisors first.

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How to use it: in your Google Sheets or Excel copy, edit only the highlighted input cells (your mobilization cost, daily burn rate, cash reserve plus available credit, which the sheet takes as one combined cell, and expected days until first payment). The cash required, your cushion, and how many days you can fund all update automatically.

The decision rule

Four numbers come out, all built from inputs you have already entered. Two of them decide it.

Cash required = mobilization cost + (daily burn × expected days to first payment). Everything you have to put out before money comes back.

Cushion = cash reserve + available credit − cash required. What is left over in dollars. It goes negative at exactly the same point coverage drops below 1.0, so the two never disagree.

Funded days = (cash reserve + available credit − mobilization cost) ÷ daily burn. How long you can run the deployment on money you already have.

Coverage = funded days ÷ expected days to first payment. How many times over you can fund the wait. This is the number the bands below are read against.

• No-go: coverage below 1.0. Your money runs out before the first payment lands, on your own estimate of when it lands. Your cushion is negative. CAT deployments rarely beat the best case, so treat this band as a firm no. Do not mobilize on these numbers. Change a number first, then re-run it: cut crew size, negotiate a mobilization advance, get a line increase in writing, or take a smaller piece of the work.
• Caution: coverage at 1.0 or above but below 1.5. You can fund the wait if it goes the way you expect, and it often does not. Ask what you would do if first payment slipped two weeks. If the answer is stop work and demobilize, treat this as a no-go, because a half-finished CAT job costs more than the one you never took. If you have a lender who answers the phone, a payer with a track record, and a scope you could cut without walking away, this can be a go with a written plan attached.
• Go: coverage at 1.5 or above. You can fund the wait plus half again. Roll, and put a date on the calendar to re-run these numbers, because burn climbs once crews are out and first payment slips more often than it arrives early.

Worked example (the sample numbers your sheet copy opens with). Mobilization $40,000. Daily burn $8,000. Cash reserve plus drawable credit $250,000. First payment expected in 60 days.

• Cash required: $40,000 + ($8,000 × 60) = $520,000
• Cushion: $250,000 − $520,000 = negative $270,000
• Funded days: ($250,000 − $40,000) ÷ $8,000 = 26.25 days
• Coverage: 26.25 ÷ 60 = 0.44, a no-go