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What do financial modelling services include?
Financial modelling services turn what you know about your business into a working Excel model: a forecast that shows what happens to profit, cash and debt when something changes.
Whether you call them financial modelling or financial modeling services, the model you get should have the same parts. Someone who didn’t build it, such as a lender, a board member or your accountant, should be able to follow every one:
- A three-statement core: profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow, linked so the balance sheet balances in every period.
- Drivers, not plugs: revenue from customers, prices and volumes; costs from headcount, rents and contracts.
- One Inputs sheet, with the source of every assumption noted, so any number can be traced back.
- Scenarios and a valuation, so you can test a downside case and see what the business is worth.
- Checks and a guide: integrity checks on every sheet, and a plain-English sheet that explains how the model fits together.
Consultant, template or us: which is right?
Most businesses weigh three routes, and each has its place. If you need an independent expert’s report, a formal model audit or advice on how to structure a deal, hire an adviser: we build the calculations and don’t give advice. For a model to plan with, raise money on or take to the bank, compare:
- A financial model consultant builds to your brief and brings judgement, but bills by the hour or the project, and a good model takes weeks to build by hand.
- A financial model template is cheap or free and ready today. But it is generic: you still write the forecast yourself, and adding a revenue line can break its links.
- We are an Australian financial modelling service. We build a model around your business from your description, documents or website. It is free to build and preview, usually ready within the hour, and reviewed by our team before it is sent.
How does it work, from request to Excel file?
Telling us takes a few minutes. You pick the periods (monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annual, for up to 30 years) and the level of detail, from a one-page view of the whole business to every driver built up. Or leave the detail to us, and we match it to the figures you have. The rest is ours.
- Tell us about the business and what the model is for, and attach what you have: annual reports, budgets, investor decks, rent rolls or spreadsheets.
- We read every document and note where each input came from, down to the file, page or row.
- Our proprietary system assembles the model from 1,500+ tested building blocks, chosen for each part of your business.
- The model is checked to balance in every period, and our team reviews it before it is sent.
- You preview every sheet online, ask for changes, then download a standard .xlsx with every formula intact and no macros.
- Every input sourced, or labelled as an assumption
- The balance sheet balances in every period
- Closing cash agrees to the balance sheet
- A Checks sheet in the workbook shows every test
- Reviewed by our team
What do lenders and investors look for?
Bankers and investors read models for a living, and they read them sceptically. A Melbourne café borrowing for a second site will be asked for the new site’s ramp-up month by month, the loan repayments, and proof there is enough cash to get through a slow winter.
A SaaS start-up raising a seed round meets a different crowd with the same instincts. Investors want the ARR bridge, churn, the payback on customer acquisition cost, and how many months of runway the raise buys.
Whatever the business, they look for the same four things:
- Assumptions they can trace: every input with a source, and anything assumed labelled as an assumption.
- Statements that tie: a balance sheet that balances and cash that reconciles, in every period.
- Cash, not just profit: the low point in the cash balance, the debt repayments and the headroom under each covenant.
- A downside case: what happens if sales come in lower or a major customer leaves.
Where do DIY models go wrong?
Most home-made spreadsheet models fail in the same few ways, and a sharp-eyed lender spots them quickly.
- A plug that forces the balance sheet to balance, hiding an error instead of fixing it.
- Numbers typed inside formulas, so changing an input doesn’t change everything it should.
- Growth rates with nothing behind them, instead of customers, prices and volumes.
- No working capital, so profit looks like cash the day it is earned, and the overdraft surprise arrives later.
- One file emailed around as “final_v7”, with nobody sure which numbers are current.
- No checks, so a broken link goes unnoticed until someone else finds it. Ours run integrity checks on every sheet, so a break shows at once.