The fourth quarter is traditionally “budget season.” For those in financial planning and analysis (FP&A), you may be cringing at reading the words budget season. I cringe when I think about the many budget memories and late nights at public companies. Is v.21 of the Board deck ready? Ugh. Founders, we are not going down […]
Forecast
Five Year Financial Projection Template
Five Year Financial Projection Template – Solving My Pain Creating a five-year financial projection or any long-term financial forecast greater than two years is a time intensive effort. You need to add X number of managers per staff, you need enough sales reps to support bookings, you need more technical support specialists as your customer […]
SaaS Revenue Waterfall Chart
SaaS Revenue Waterfall Chart Ugh, Budget Season! For most of us, we are beginning budget season or we are in the midst of budget season spending crazy hours manipulating numbers, building models, and meeting with department heads to create a workable first draft of the budget. I won’t dive into the pro’s and con’s of […]
Capital Expenditure Forecast Model
Easy Forecast for Capital Expenditures When I was working in airline industry, capital budgeting was a large part of the of budgeting and forecasting process. Makes sense. Lots of airplanes and equipment at the airports. You didn’t want to get your depreciation forecast wrong and mess up the cash flow forecast. Big problems. You spent […]
SaaS Revenue Forecast Model
SaaS Revenue Forecast Model I try to keep my financial statement models as simple as possible. I don’t forecast on one tab, but I also don’t have 30+ tabs of assumptions and formulas. I build my models around the operations of the business and the important metrics. Enough detail to be accurate and supportable but […]
How I Forecast Operating Expenses
Forecast Operating Expenses In a previous post, I discussed how I forecast headcount expenses and the related physical heads and benefits. Of course, this is just one piece of the corporate expense puzzle. It is also important to have an easy and quick way to forecast operating expenses without hard coding numbers month-by-month. Excel Template […]
How I Create Detailed Headcount Forecasts
Headcount Forecasts in Excel For a software company, personnel-related expenses are usually the largest operating expense by far on the P&L (Profit and Loss Statement). As a large expense, you’ll want to forecast this as accurately as possible. I’ll walk you through how I create detailed headcount forecasts. You can download the Excel model I […]