# Liquidity Stress Test > Applies a revenue-drop shock to the cash position via a bundled calculator, finds the trough month and shortfall if any, and ranks available mitigations by how much cash or runway each actually restores, instead of a stress test that ends at "here's what could go wrong" with no sized response. Use whenever the user needs to stress-test liquidity against a downside scenario, is preparing a contingency plan, or has a stress test that identifies risk but never sizes or ranks what to actually do about it. - Skill: `natan-mohart/liquidity-stress-test` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add natan-mohart/liquidity-stress-test` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/natan-mohart/liquidity-stress-test/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Finance & Business - Author: Natan-Mohart (https://skillmd.com/u/natan-mohart) - Updated: 2026-09-21 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/natan-mohart/liquidity-stress-test --- # Liquidity Stress Test ## When to use Use whenever cash position needs to be tested against a genuine downside, not just tracked under the current plan — before a board or lender conversation that will ask "what happens if revenue drops," or as a standing discipline for any business carrying real liquidity risk. Especially use to replace a stress test that stops at identifying the risk without sizing what specific actions would actually close the gap. ## What it does Applies a stated revenue-drop shock to the monthly net burn via a bundled calculator, projects the cash balance across the stress horizon, finds the trough month and the shortfall if cash would go negative, and ranks a list of candidate mitigations by exactly how much cash or runway each one restores — turning "we should probably cut costs" into a ranked, sized list of specific actions. ## Method 1. **State the base monthly net burn** under the current plan, before any shock is applied. 2. **Define the shock explicitly**: a specific revenue drop percentage, not a vague "if things get worse." A defensible shock size usually comes from a real historical precedent or a specific plausible risk (a major customer churning, a macro downturn comparable to a past cycle). 3. **Account for collection delay as part of the shock**, not just the revenue drop itself — a revenue shortfall often arrives with a lag in when cash actually stops coming in, and modeling only the revenue drop without the collection timing understates the near-term cash impact. 4. **Run the bundled calculator** (`scripts/stress_test.py`) to get the month-by-month stressed cash balance, the trough month, and the shortfall amount if the balance would go negative. 5. **Build the mitigation list before the stress test, not after seeing a scary result.** Real candidate actions: a credit line that could be drawn, specific opex cuts with their monthly savings, planned hires that could be delayed — each with an honest estimate of its cash or monthly-savings impact. 6. **Read the ranked mitigation output as the actual output of the exercise**, not the trough number alone. The trough tells you there's a problem; the ranked list tells you what to actually do about it and how much each option is worth. 7. **Pre-commit to which mitigations trigger at which point**, rather than deciding under pressure once the stress scenario starts to look real — name the specific cash level or month that would trigger drawing the credit line versus cutting discretionary spend. ## Inputs - Current cash and base monthly net burn - The stress shock: revenue drop percentage and collection delay - Stress horizon in months - Candidate mitigations with their cash impact (one-time) or monthly savings (ongoing) - Config saved as JSON matching the format documented at the top of `scripts/stress_test.py` ## Output format Month-by-month stressed cash balance; trough cash and month; explicit shortfall flag if the balance goes negative; ranked mitigation list showing exactly how much cash or runway each option restores. ## Example A 30% revenue-drop shock, with a one-month collection delay factored in, shows the business would run out of cash by month 12, a $105,000 shortfall at the trough. Rather than stopping there, the ranked mitigation list shows drawing an available credit line restores $1M, dwarfing what an opex cut alone would provide in the same window — the specific, sized comparison the trough number alone never would have surfaced. ## Common pitfalls - Running a stress test that only identifies risk without ranking what mitigations would actually close the resulting gap. - Applying the revenue shock without accounting for the collection delay that typically comes with it, understating the near-term impact. - Deciding on mitigations only after the crisis starts, instead of pre-committing to specific triggers ahead of time.