How to Use This Tool
Compare cash collected before kickoff with the weekly cost of delivering the work. A deposit can feel substantial while contractor, travel and production payments consume it long before the client's final invoice is due.
Why Deposit Runway needs more than a raw total
Dividing cash already collected by weekly delivery spending separates project funding from headline contract value that is not yet available. For this page, the useful comparison is deposit-funded runway, not whichever input happens to be largest. The Deposit Runway result answers the decision in the heading and should not be reused as a score for a different workflow.
The exact Deposit Runway formula
Deposit-funded weeks equal the client deposit collected divided by expected weekly project cash spending. The visible fields are Client deposit collected and Expected project cash spending. For Deposit Runway, read each printed unit before entry and make the values describe one transaction, cohort or reporting window. If those scopes differ, the displayed deposit-funded runway may be arithmetically valid but operationally meaningless.
Interpreting deposit-funded runway
Compare the runway with the delivery and payment schedule, then change milestones or reserve cash before committing nonrefundable spending. The ten-percent comparison is deliberately narrow: it tests the influence of client deposit collected and is neither a forecast nor a confidence interval. Preserve the values used, their dates and the resulting decision so a later reviewer can reproduce why Deposit Runway supported the choice.
What this Deposit Runway model leaves out
This is a cash-timing estimate, not profit; it excludes taxes, existing balances, payment risk and costs outside the entered weekly amount. That is where Deposit Runway stops being trustworthy. If an excluded factor could reverse deposit-funded runway, extend the model explicitly or use the authoritative account system instead of hiding the factor inside an unexplained adjustment.
Evidence and independent verification
The reference reviewed for Deposit Runway is U.S. SBA — Manage your finances. U.S. SBA — Manage your finances supports the named definition or rule but does not supply private values for deposit-funded runway. Before acting on the result, reconcile the worked example with the relevant dashboard, invoice, export or measurement.
Private, reproducible calculation
Deposit Runway runs its arithmetic in the current browser tab and requests no login or API key. That keeps the Deposit Runway inputs away from the site's calculation server, while leaving the user responsible for detecting stale data or a changed platform rule. When an assumption changes, reopen U.S. SBA — Manage your finances and rerun the saved Deposit Runway scenario.
Sources & assumptions
Tool Spec v2 · verified 2026-08-22. Platform rules and fees can change; the editable inputs remain authoritative for your account.
Official references
- U.S. SBA — Manage your finances (checked 2026-08-22)
Model assumptions
- Every input covers the same reporting period or cohort.
- This is a cash-timing estimate, not profit; it excludes taxes, existing balances, payment risk and costs outside the entered weekly amount.
- The calculator uses only the visible fields and does not fetch account data.
