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One number: the cash your book must stand up at all times to run the volume you are running.

The working companion to Funding the Commercial Build: Working Capital for the Pivot. The guide explains why the float exists and is structural. This page puts a figure on yours.

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How to use this page. Print it or save it as a PDF and fill in the six inputs. The calculation is worked all the way through below with numbers you can check line by line, so you can follow the same steps with yours. Everything is here. There is nothing to download and no spreadsheet to open. Do it with your finance lead in the room, not alone.

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How this page differs from the Go/No-Go calculator. The CAT Deployment Go/No-Go Calculator: Can You Fund the Float? runs float math on one deployment: a single job in front of you, decided once. This page sizes the standing book: the cash that has to be there permanently because several jobs are always open at different stages and the float never fully closes. A shop can pass the Go/No-Go on every individual job it takes and still be undercapitalized, because each yes was affordable on its own and the stack was not.

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The six inputs

Pull these before you calculate anything.

  1. Annual commercial revenue: what your commercial book bills in a year. Commercial only.
  2. Direct job cost as a percentage of revenue: labor, materials, subs, and equipment on the job. Not overhead, not office salaries. If you do not know it, your job costing will tell you within an afternoon.
  3. Days-to-cash on the main payment: your measured average from work complete to the day the invoice clears apart from retainage. Not to paid in full. Measure it with Days-to-Cash Tracker: Find Your Real Commercial Pay Cycle rather than assuming ninety, and use the date 1 to date 4 average that page has you work out.
  4. Retainage percentage held: typically 5 to 10 percent on commercial work. Use what your contracts actually say.
  5. Extra days retainage sits beyond that payment: from the day the rest of the invoice clears to the day the retainage lands. The same tracker's date 4 to date 5 average.
  6. Peak factor: your busiest month's billings divided by your average month's billings. This is what turns an average into a number that survives your busy season.

Why inputs 3 and 5 split where they do, which decides whether the answer is right. Line D carries every dollar of monthly cost across the days in input 3. Put a paid-in-full figure there and those days already contain the retainage wait, so line E then charges you for the same retainage a second time and the whole worksheet reads high. Split at the main payment and each line counts its own money once. If your accounting cannot separate the two dates, use the paid-in-full number in input 3 and set input 5 to zero. Overstating the requirement is not the safe error it sounds like, because it is the number you take to a bank.

Write them down here before you touch the table. Five of the twelve lines below read straight off these figures rather than off the lines above them, so if they are not written down the table cannot be checked by anyone but you. Line K also needs one figure the six do not carry, your line of credit rate, so capture that here as well.