# The cash flow float model every seasonal e-commerce brand needs
Amazon holds your money for 14 days. Your suppliers want payment on receipt or within 30 days. Your Q4 purchase orders need to go out in September. The math does not work by default. There is a cash gap built into the structure of e-commerce, and most brands do not find it until they are already in it.
The gap is structural. Your best sales months, October through December, require inventory that you have to buy and ship in July through September. The revenue that should fund that inventory has not been earned yet. The Amazon disbursements covering your August ad spend will not land until mid-September. Meanwhile, the supplier needs a deposit this week to hold your production slot.
This is not a cash flow crisis. It is cash flow physics. Understanding it as a predictable, modelable constraint changes how you plan.
The float model
The Wargames Delivered operation runs a credit card billing cycle float model that maps three things against each other: supplier payment due dates, Amazon disbursement dates, and the credit card billing window.
WGD has three payment due dates to track each month: the 13th, the 20th, and the 25th. Different suppliers, different cards, different billing cycles. Amazon pays out bi-weekly. The credit card billing cycle runs approximately 19 to 23 days depending on the card and the purchase date.
Here is where the float becomes useful. If you charge a large supplier order on the first day of a billing cycle, you have the full float period, roughly 19 to 23 days, before that payment is due. If you charge it on the last day of the billing cycle, you have almost no float. The timing of the charge determines how long you have before the cash leaves your account.
The WGD float figure is $44,000. That is the amount of purchasing power available within a single billing cycle float window, mapped against expected disbursement timing. It is not a magic number. It is specific to WGD's credit facilities, their billing cycle structure, and their typical order sizes. Your number will be different. But the model is the same.
How to build it
Start with your supplier payment schedule. List every obligation and its due date. Be specific: not "Supplier A is net-30" but "Supplier A invoice dated September 5 is due October 5."
Map those dates against your Amazon disbursement schedule. Amazon pays out every 14 days. You can project those dates forward based on your current disbursement cycle. Identify which weeks have disbursements landing before a supplier payment is due, and which weeks do not.
Now add the credit card layer. For each major purchase, identify which billing cycle it falls in and when the payment for that cycle is due. Purchases timed to the start of a billing cycle give you maximum float. Purchases timed to the end give you almost none.
The output is a week-by-week view of cash in versus cash out for the next 13 weeks. Some weeks are fine. Some weeks are constrained. The constrained weeks are the ones that require either a disbursement to arrive before the PO goes out, a credit card charge timed to maximize float, or a decision to delay a purchase by three days so it falls in the next billing cycle.
Why Q4 breaks this model
Q4 inventory requires 2x to 3x normal purchasing levels, and it requires them 8 to 12 weeks before the revenue arrives. The float model that works for normal months breaks under Q4 purchasing volumes. The credit card limit that gives you $44,000 in float does not give you $132,000 just because you need it in October.
This is where explicit planning is the only option. The Q4 PO schedule has to be built against a cash position model, not just an inventory position model. Before placing Q4 orders, map every payment due date in August, September, and October against projected Amazon disbursements for those months. Identify the cash gap. That gap needs to be funded, whether through credit facility expansion, supplier payment terms negotiation, or phased ordering.
The businesses that run out of cash in October are not the ones that planned poorly for holiday demand. They are the ones that planned inventory well and cash poorly. The inventory plan said "we need 5,000 units." The cash plan did not exist. The gap ate them.
One practical constraint worth naming
Suppliers who have been paid late before will not give you net-30 terms when you want them. Payment history is the currency that buys flexibility. Paying on time during Q2 and Q3, even when cash is tighter than you would like, is what earns the supplier relationship that lets you ask for a split payment plan in September when the Q4 PO is larger than normal. The float model only works if the supplier relationship is intact.
Build the model before you need it. The weeks when you need it are the weeks you do not have time to build it.
