90-Day Cash Buffer Calculator
How long the business survives if revenue drops 30%. Six inputs, one answer: days of runway.
Six inputs. One answer: how many days your business has at −30% revenue. Results update as you type.
What is a 90-day cash buffer?
Your cash buffer is how many days the business survives if revenue drops sharply or stops. It answers the only question that matters in a downturn: how long do you have to fix things before you can't make payroll? Revenue is vanity; cash is survival. Most owners have never calculated this number, and most are shocked by how low it is.
Healthy benchmarks
A healthy service business holds 60–90 days of operating expenses in accessible cash. Under 30 days is fragile — one lost anchor client or a slow quarter and you're in crisis. Banks, investors, and acquirers all read cash runway as the clearest signal of how well a business is actually run.
How to build it
Cut fixed costs you don't need, bring receivables in faster (tighter terms, deposits up front), and move surplus into a separate buffer account you don't touch. In the Business Evolution Framework, cash buffer is core Foundation work — it's the layer everything else stands on. You build the buffer in the good months so the bad months don't end the business.
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