Standard Model

An overview of how to use the Standard Financial Model to model consumer, SMB, and enterprise SaaS.

An overview of how to use the Standard Financial Model to model ecommerce businesses.

An overview of how to use the Standard Financial Model to model marketplace businesses.

An overview of how to use the Standard Financial Model to model hardware businesses, including hardware businesses with software business lines.

An overview of how to use the Standard Financial Model to model services and consulting businesses.

How the Foresight models calculates accruals and payables

The Breakdown sheet goes beyond financial analysis to provide additional management analysis on the performance of the business, by automatically creating a profit and loss statement with each user-defined business segment in its own column.

How to use the prebuilt Budget sheet to do variance comparisons between the forecast and actual results.

How the Foresight financial models forecast deferred revenue

How to use the prebuilt Forecasting Drivers to easily create dynamic forecasts.

By default, the models are built by month for either 3 or 5 years. Here's how to extend them if you need to model more periods.

The Forecast sheet is the core sheet for entering expenses, creating a hiring plan, reporting revenues and billings, fundraising, and all the root calculations. Here's an explainer on how it works.

Get Started is the core input sheet for all Foresight Models. Here's how it works.

How to use the Hiring Plan and Forecast sheets to detail new hires, employees, and a staffing plan, including salaries, benefits, taxes, bonuses, commissions, and other expenses.

How the models uses historical financials to create budget variances and rolling forecasts.

How the Foresight models calculate interest income

Key Metrics is a sheet to highlight key annual management analysis metrics for the business, focused on metrics for SaaS businesses. Here's how it works.

The Key Reports sheet consists of prebuilt charts for burn, runway, cash, sources and uses, and many other key metrics.

Model checks is a feature on the base startup models to help identify model errors or business issues. Here's how it works.

The default revenue model in the Standard Financial Model is prebuilt to handle a wide variety of business models. Here's an explainer on how it works.

How to analyze scenarios using scenario tables and simulation add-ons.

How to use the seaonality feature in the Foresight financial models

Snapshot is a sheet to highlight key insights about the business at specific points in time. Here's how it works.

A key part of creating a fundraising ask is understanding and communicating how the money will be raised. A sources and uses chart is a fairly standard way to communicate it, and a summary of the key expenses helps to tell the full story. Here's how I do it.

The Statements sheet in the Standard Financial Model contains the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash Flows.

The Summary sheet is the first place to view to communicate the key insights about the business to the intended audience of the model.

How Foresight's models calculate corporate income taxes and VAT.

How to use the Unit Economics sheet to model and communicate margins, breakeven, and lifetime value on a per-unit basis.

Valuing early-stage companies can be more of an art than a science. Here I'll explain the basics behind discounted cash flow (DCF) and multiple-based valuation, and detail how they are implemented in Foresight's models.

Five year financial model template for ecommerce businesses with prebuilt consolidated income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows and key charts, summaries, and key metrics. Identical to the Standard Financial Model, easy to use for direct-to-consumer (DTC) cohort-based revenue forecasting with prebuilt inventory calculations, input any cost of sales structure. Ready to add in third-party, wholesale, and other ecommerce channels.

Five year financial model template for SaaS businesses with prebuilt three statements - income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows - and key charts, summaries, metrics, and funding forecasts. Identical to the Standard Financial Model, easy to use for consumer, SMB, and enterprise SaaS, with cohort-based revenue forecasting.

Five year financial model template for services and consulting businesses with three statements - consolidated income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows - and key charts, summaries, metrics, and funding forecasts. Identical to the Standard Financial Model, easy to use for project-based and staff-based revenue forecasting.

Five year financial model template for Excel or Google Sheets with prebuilt three statements - consolidated income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows - and key charts, summaries, metrics, and funding forecasts.