This is a repost of an article I originally wrote for the Wayra blog during my time as VC analyst. You can find the original article here.

Shoutout to my former colleague Erik Hafner who helped a lot in creating the template.

In the meantime I’ve actually received feedback from 2-3 startups that they successfully used this template during their funding rounds with VCs, which is super cool.

Financial Planning Templates for Startups

The template follows a top-down approach, where you can set your revenue target at the end of the third forecast year. Based on your inputs in the respective sheets (like planned headcount, costs, and annual contract value), it will calculate the necessary customers you’ll need to acquire to achieve your revenue target.

Unfortunately, it will never be possible to create a one-size-fits-all template, so feel free to modify whatever you like. Be careful around overly complicated formulas—but you can always download this template anew in case you break something and don’t know how to fix it.

A big thank you to my colleague Erik Hafner for implementing the basic logic and structure.

Together with the Pitch Deck Template, this will complete your funding round prep package.

How to Use This Template

This template contains the following sheets:

• Intro Guide (also pasted below)
• Summary: Overview of all key metrics and drivers
• Assumptions: Reiterate the inputs for the three different scenarios to adapt your plan
• Sales Pipeline: Fill the leads & customers you already have to enable more accurate planning
• Headcount Planning: Fill in your current employees and future hiring plan
• Costs: Consolidated headcount costs (from headcount planning) and monthly expenses
• Financial Statement: Comprehensive overview of P&L and basic cashflows

Step 1: Sales Pipeline

• Add your current customers to the list (feel free to replace the dummy leads as needed)
• Enter the respective lead status
• Add first contact date (for sales cycle calculation)
• Add PoC/Trial start date
• Add PoC/Trial volume
• Add contract start date
• Add cancellation date (if applicable)
• Add annual contract value
• PoC length and the respective sales cycle are calculated automatically and added to the assumptions as reference
• Ensure that the formulas on the right side of your new/existing customer are filled in to enable the correct calculation
• Add your generated leads in the historic period to the sales pipeline in cells P9 to AA9 to calculate the conversion rate
• If you don’t enter any leads (e.g., for 2023), no MRR/additional customers will be planned; you will still get the output of the additional customers needed to reach your ARR target

Step 2: Headcount Planning

• Add the general info of your employees in cells B47+ to H47+
• Column B: Customizable with (code) names of the employees
• Column C: Add the position/title of the employee; ensure correct spelling for accurate attribution to line items
• To add a new employee, fill out the pre-filled lines; if you need to add a new line, drag down from rows above
• The Job Title is attributed automatically to the given category in the Headcount Planning and Cost sheet; please double-check
• Column D: Allocate salary costs to a financial statement line item (only four categories available)
• Columns E to I: Add hiring date, end date (if applicable), annual gross salary, salary raise percentage, and raise date
• Monthly salary (including non-wage labor cost and applicable raises) is calculated automatically for the Headcount Planning and Costs Sheet
• Change categories via: Right-click on a tab → Unhide sheets → Dropdown Lists

Step 3: Costs

• Check if personnel costs from the headcount planning are displayed correctly and attributed to a category
• Headcount cost values are shown cumulatively for all employees with the same title
• Add historic non-personnel costs in cells P45 to AA49
• Copy and paste costs for one month over 12 months
• You can add additional line items, but ensure they are attributed to a P&L line item (G&A, COGS, etc.); check sums afterward

Step 4: Assumptions

4.1 Revenue Assumptions

• Edit the start date of your forecast (e.g., 01.01.2022)
• This template supports three scenarios (low, base, high)—fill in assumptions for each
• Green values next to assumptions are references based on your inputs
• The ARR target at the end of year 3 is the most important driver
• Add your sales cycle data
• Add your Annual Contract Value (ACV): e.g., for B2B SaaS, 1 customer with 25 licenses for 10€/month * 12 months = €3,000
• Add non-recurring revenue info (PoC/Trial length, avg. volume, percentage of customers doing trials before contracts)

4.2 Monthly (Non-)Personnel Cost Assumptions

• Enter estimated non-wage labor costs for personnel
• Add monthly non-personnel spend

4.3 Cashflow

• Add your cashflow calculation figures
• DSO (Days Sales Outstanding): Average days customers take to pay bills (default: 45 days)
• DPO (Days Payables Outstanding): Average days to pay bills (default: 30 days)
• Interest rate on debt: Add your interest payments to the financial statement
• Tax Rate: Country-specific, but 25-30% is a reasonable assumption

Step 5: Financial Statements

• Scroll to row 77 to add planned/unplanned D&A if necessary
• Add interest expenses in row 84 (future debt payments are auto-calculated)
• Add starting working capital in P99-AA102 (current accounts receivable + short-term assets - accounts payable)
• Leaving initial working capital figures empty is okay
• Add accounts receivables & payables for the historical period; future values are auto-calculated
• Add planned issuance of equity and debt repayments as absolute values in P110-BK112

Step 6: Reiterate & Check the Summary

• After filling in data & assumptions, review the assumptions sheet to ensure values make sense
• In the summary tab, select scenarios (low, base, high) for which values were entered
• Customize charts by selecting displayed variables via the dropdown in each top-left corner

Step 7: Play Around, Have Fun, and Break Things!

You can always download this template anew if needed!

Disclaimer

This model may still contain errors and lead to misleading calculations about your business. Wayra does not take any responsibility for financial damages incurred by using this model! Use this template at your own risk!