Starter Financial Model

Best for building an initial forecast, cost budget, simple revenue forecast, cash flow analysis, funding needs, and cap table, for all types of businesses. Instant download, use in Microsoft Excel™, Google Docs™, and other spreadsheet programs.

New · 2017 Are you starting a business or have an ongoing business and need to forecast your operations and financials? Do you need to understand your costs, revenues and key metrics better for your own business planning or to present to investors? Build a cost budget, simple revenue projections, cashflow forecast, and full financial statements for your business in an hour using the Starter Financial Model.
The model is built to forecast the potential operational and financial future of your business, focusing on a cashflow budget, hiring plan, estimate of costs, simple revenue forecast and funding needs. Build your own revenue forecasts specifically for your business, leveraging the monthly subscription and simple ecommerce revenue models already built in (for more comprehensive revenue forecasting methodologies, use the Standard Financial Model). The forecast is done monthly, quarterly and annually up to 4 years. Use your past historical operations and financials, or start from scratch with a forecast for a new idea. And, it can all be modified to add in your own unique revenue calculations, as all formulas and cells are completely open and unlocked. Purchase one-time, customize however and whenever you want, and updates to the model are automatically distributed for free.

Who Should Use This

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All businesses, startups to growth-stage, tech and non-tech.
Works for companies starting from scratch as well as companies with multiple years of historical operational and financial data that they want to use in reporting and forecasting.
Focuses on creating a forecast of costs and cashflows over a 3-4 year period.
Provides a basic structure for forecasting users, customers, and revenues for monthly subscriptions and simple ecommerce revenue models.
This model provides the ease of use in getting started fast with the extensibility to customize or add on more detailed user and revenue forecasts specific to your business.

Why I Built This

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I created the financial models behind Foresight so early-stage entrepreneurs can spend less time on finance and more time on their products. I built the Starter Model because I wanted to build a solid, robust model that helped entrepreneurs forecast their costs and cashflows, and provide a solid base to build their unique business model into the projections. I’ve been building and helping entrepreneurs build financial models for startups since 1998. More about my story here.

Key Features

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Simple yet robust methodology for creating a 12-48 month forecast of operating expenses, while also automatically handling the accounting treatment of the expenses.
Assumptions are maintained on the primary Forecast sheet and can be modified for any time period.
Start from scratch, or use historical operational and financial data for reporting or to ad in forecasting.
Provides a basic structure for forecasting users, customers, and revenues for monthly subscriptions and simple ecommerce revenue models.
Cashflow analysis, including external funding forecasts, is integrated into the model with a capitalization table, forecasting out investment rounds, dilution and ownership (optional).
Robust functionality to use Actual financial data in the model, to analyze the forecast compared to the actual results, and to create rolling forecasts that seamlessly combine the projections with the actual results.
All formulas and sheets are open for editing, anything is open for editing. I don’t believe that models should be locked, everything should be open for you to edit so that you can model your business exactly as you want.

What’s Inside

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1. README. Description of model, layout, and how to use it.
2. Outline and How To. Two sheets that detail the model and how calculations flow, explaining how each sheet works. Assumptions are noted and explained throughout the model.
3. Key Reports. Charts and tables of costs, active users (optional), cash on hand, revenue and revenue growth rate, net income and cumulative net income, margins, sources and uses, and more.
4. Summary. Key operational and financial metrics organized in a clean summary, reported over 3 years, built to be easily customizable for your key metrics and timeframes.
5. Settings. Model-wide assumptions and settings for acquisition flow.
6. Costs. Cost budget, hiring plan.
7. Revenues. User acquisition and revenue calculations. Flexible to add on your own user acquisition and revenue calculations to fit your business.
8. Forecast. Consolidated financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows. Includes a detailed cash flow forecast that automatically forecasts funding requirements based on a simple assumption of how many months epenses to raise money for. Use this sheet for forecasting only, or bring in your historical financials to show either a mix of the past and the future, or to compare budgets to forecasts.
9. Cap Table. The cap table in the Starter Model is the Cap Table Model integrated into the cash flows of the business, mapping forecasted expenses and net burn to needed fundraising to estimated funding rounds by size and date.
10. Actuals. Optional sheet if you have past financial data you want to report in the model and use in forecasting.
11. Actuals + Forecast. Optional sheet that combines the Actual data with the Forecas to create rolling forecasts. Simply “roll over” the model by editing one cell each month after you input new Actual data into the Actuals sheet, and the combined forecast updates automatically.
12. Key Reports - Actuals + Forecast. The same key reports from the earlier sheet, but drawing on the Actuals + Forecast data.
13. Changelog. Details of all edits to the model since release, by version number.

Model Inputs

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The model includes over 65 assumptions around user acquisition, revenues, costs, and funding.
Acquisition: Organic and Paid acquisition.
Retention: Monthly churn, if applicable.
Revenues: subscriptions are monthly by default, set price, churn, costs to provide subscriptions (COGS), discounts, and chargebacks and refunds, while ecommerce assumptions include conversion rates, orders per user, revenue and cost of goods sold (COGS) per order, discounts, and chargebacks and refunds.
For more comprehensive revenue forecasting methodologies, including subscriptions that are not billed monthly, MRR detail, expansion and contraction revenue, and full SaaS accounting, and more detailed ecommerce forecasts including multiple SKUs, inventories, and more, use the Standard Financial Model.
Hiring: staff hiring, salaries, roles, and when to hire, including an overall salary expense assumption to calculate team sizes automatically based on company growth.
Costs: flexible inputs to input all costs easily on a month by month basis. Expenses can be allocated to key expense areas and labled for accounting treatment as SG&A, COGS, or CAPEX.
Funding: equity fundraising forecasting, number of months to raise capital, % of the company sold in investment round (premoney valuation).

Payment, Terms and Conditions

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Instant Download - one .xlsx Excel file. Immediately after purchase you will receive a download link and an invoice for your records.
Updates to the model are free, and the model can be re-downloaded at any time.
Credit/Debt Cards and PayPal accepted; all transactions are SSL secured and no payment details are stored by Foresight (see here to understand the details behind our transaction provider, their security and how they never store payment details).
All inputs and formulas are clearly labled; all formulas are open for editing and can be changed by user (i.e. no locked cells).
Works for any currency; Foresight models have been used by entrepreneurs from over 98 countries.
Use in Microsoft Excel™, Google Docs™, and other spreadsheet programs.
If applicable, VAT is extra.
Bulk license purchases available, details here.
Purchase signifies acceptance of terms and privacy policy.

Starter Financial Model

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