Plan your raise the way investors actually evaluate it.

Work Backwards — Target Subscribers from Target ARR

Read right to left: your ARR goal sets the customers your funnel must win. Targets come from the Timeline & Goals tab.

Contract & Pricing Structure

How you price and structure contracts determines the shape of your revenue recognition.

Your go-to-market motion

Three questions. Everything below this card — benchmarks, funnel, CAC — follows from your answers.

Manual CAC

How should the model cost customer acquisition? Start with Manual CAC — the model suggests benchmarks for your segment. The Funnel Manager rebuilds CAC bottoms-up and is best used to pressure-test the manual number.

Sales Funnel Model — Work Backwards

From the gross-adds-per-month the Acquisition Plan requires, the funnel reverse-engineers the leads, SDRs, and reps needed to deliver them — and the CAC that implies.

Cost of Service

Subscription COGS — cloud, customer success and other usage costs — is entered as a % of total revenue (Stream 2 below) and is usually low: that's your real SaaS gross margin. Implementation / services COGS is labour-intensive and often loses money in Year 1, which is expected and should show clearly.

Sales & Marketing

Product & Engineering

G&A

Balance Sheet Assumptions

The pieces a pure P&L misses: computers you capitalize, money customers owe you (AR), money you owe vendors (AP), and — the big SaaS one — cash collected up front on annual prepay (deferred revenue). Leave anything at zero; grey text is a suggested starting point, not a default.

⭐ Milestone years highlighted. Shows how working capital and CapEx turn EBITDA into actual cash — including the deferred-revenue tailwind from prepaid customers.

Cash flow (indirect): EBITDA − ΔAR + ΔAP + ΔDeferred Revenue − CapEx + Equity Raised = Net cash change. Taxes and interest excluded (pre-profit stage). PP&E depreciates straight-line; depreciation is non-cash. Working-capital balances driven by DSO / DPO / prepay above.

OpEx Detail — line by line

Every OpEx line from your inputs, computed by year. Employee lines include the payroll gross-up; G&A includes the contingency. Mirrors the OpEx input tab exactly and reconciles to Total OpEx in the model.

Health Scorecard

Rule-based checks that pressure-test your model the way a diligent investor would — internal consistency, unit economics, and growth realism. Each check shows how a VC reads it and a suggested fix.

⭐ Milestone years highlighted. All figures annual. GAAP revenue recognition with deferred revenue and AR.

* Revenue recognition: license fee amortized monthly (GAAP). Implementation fee recognized over months 1–2 of contract. AR is driven by billings and the DSO on the Balance Sheet tab (45 days); deferred revenue by the Billing Terms mix. OpEx scales with ARR growth from Year 1 base. Raise sizes include 25% buffer.

Cash flow (indirect): EBITDA ± working-capital changes − CapEx + equity raised. Balance sheet shows the working-capital + CapEx items; "Net Assets" = total assets − total liabilities (full equity/retained-earnings not built out at this scope). Taxes and interest excluded (pre-profit stage).

Timeline & Goals

Your fundraising journey on one page — the ARR you need to hit at each round, the raise that funds the burn to get there, and the milestones along the way. This is the destination; the rest of the model is how you reach it.

Rounds & goals

KPI Summary

Annual operating metrics across the 6-year forecast. Milestone years highlighted. All % of ARR metrics are SaaS efficiency benchmarks — best-in-class targets shown for reference.

GRR = Gross Revenue Retention (1 − annual logo churn). NRR = Net Revenue Retention — starts at your Year-1 NRR input and straight-lines down to your NRR floor over four years, then holds. OpEx % benchmarks: S&M 30–50% of ARR (early stage), Product 20–30%, G&A 10–15%.

Revenue Build — Work Backwards

How customers become revenue, step by step: new customers → subscriber base → MRR/ARR → GAAP recognized revenue. Every figure is calculated monthly and summed to annual — never computed annually and allocated down. Ties to the 3-Statement to the dollar.

Budget vs Actual

Budget column auto-populates from the model. Enter actuals manually or use the QBO/Xero Import tab to paste them. Variance = Actual minus Budget.

Send your forecast to your bookkeeper / accountant

Your 3-statement forecast, decomposed into the revenue, cost-of-service and OpEx detail that sums to each P&L line, mapped to a chart of accounts and tagged with the model labels. System-neutral — ready for a bookkeeper, or for a German Steuerberater to map to DATEV/SKR.

Send the Forecast by Account file to your accountant — it carries the numbers and reconciles to your model. The COA exports set up the accounting system itself (QBO now; Xero and German DATEV/SKR are planned as translations of the same account list & model labels). German GmbH statutory books belong in DATEV with your Steuerberater; use these for internal management reporting.

Step 1 — Paste Your QBO / Xero P&L Export

Export a P&L from QuickBooks Online or Xero (any date range), then paste the raw data below. Use tab-separated or comma-separated format.

Step 2 — Map Your Accounts to Model Categories

For each of your QBO/Xero account names, select the corresponding model category. This tells the model where each actual figure belongs.

Step 3 — Apply to Budget vs Actual

Once mapping is complete, click below to push the actuals into the Budget vs Actual tab.

Company Setup

This information appears on all outputs and reports. Powered by the Work Backwards Framework.

Instructions

Field-by-field guidance. Two minutes here saves rework on every output the model produces.

Roadmap & Timeline

This is the first slide of the finance section of your fundraise deck. It's where you present investors your long-term vision as a sequence of funding rounds leading to critical success — an exit or IPO. It shows, in the clearest possible fashion, the endpoint each round targets and how you project value creation and funding along the way. The preview below builds live as you complete this page.

Instructions

📋 Cap Table — Lightweight

Auto-computed from each round's pre-money valuation and raise amount. Shows ownership dilution across rounds for founders, the option pool, and investors at each stage.

Non-Dilutive Funding

Grants, SBIR/STTR awards, and government contracts that reduce cash burn without diluting equity. These are cash inflows in your model — they do not unlock funding rounds, but they extend runway between rounds.

Commercial Research Agreements (CRAs)

Partnerships with larger companies that fund your research in exchange for licensing rights, data access, or co-development options. Common in pharma, ag-biotech, and defense. Enter as annual cash inflows.

Partnership & Licensing Opportunities

Strategic deals — licensing an indication to a larger company, milestone payments, royalty streams, or co-development rights. These can be significant cash events but require bespoke negotiation and legal modeling. Document your opportunities here for reference.

* Partnership values are noted for reference only and are not included in the financial model. A consultant session is recommended to model deal structure, milestone triggers, and royalty economics.

Commercial Revenue

For most DeepTech companies, commercial product revenue begins only after regulatory approval — which may be beyond this model's horizon. Enter revenue only if you have a realistic near-term path to commercial sales (e.g. FDA device clearance, EPA registration, or a dual-use commercial market).

Instructions

This is the most substantial block — about an hour. It's also where the model becomes yours: every role and expense you enter here is a number you can defend in front of an investor. Have a budget in Excel already? Keep it open beside this page and transfer the lines — that pass is how your plan gets converted into Work Backwards form. Rough numbers are fine; refine later or in your onboarding session.

The three Modes — click each to see it filled in

Every row's Mode (far right) controls how its cost is spread over time. Pick the one that matches reality:

Annual + %

A salary that grows a set % each year. Most W-2 / 1099 roles.

Per year

A different amount each year. Budgets that ramp unevenly.

Specific months

Click the exact months an event happens. One-offs & conferences.

Color Convention

Standard notation used throughout this model.

Raise & Burn Timeline

Annual burn, non-dilutive funding offsets, equity raises, and cash balance across your model horizon. Raise years are set in the Funding Rounds & Endpoints tab.

* OpEx comes line-by-line from your OpEx Input plan; years beyond 2030 extend the 2030 plan at the Beyond-2030 Multiple. Lab supplies are included as cash burn. Non-dilutive funding (grants + CRAs) reduces net burn. Raise amounts and years come from the Roadmap & Timeline round cards. Commercial revenue included only if a start year is set on the Grants tab.

Round Milestone Summary

Each round's target raise, expected timing, and primary endpoint.

Balance Sheet Assumptions

Opening balances, working capital days, and capex schedule. Leave anything at zero that doesn't apply yet — grey text shows suggested starting points.

🩺 DeepTech Health Scorecard

A rule-based read of how a DeepTech investor will underwrite this plan — milestone funding, dilution path, burn profile, grant leverage, and revenue realism. Every flag shows the diligence question behind it and where in the model to fix it. Benchmarks are informed defaults for your pathway.