Investor-Grade Financial Projections
Build a 3-year P&L, cash, and headcount plan from leads, close rate, and price, not hand-typed revenue.
Example scenario—not a forecast or verified benchmark. Enable JavaScript to edit inputs, view charts, save locally and export your analysis.
Example inputs
- Qualified leads per month (today)
- 150
- Annual lead growth
- 20
- Close rate (leads to customers)
- 25
- Close rate improvement per year
- 1
- Average revenue per customer/job
- 4,500
- Annual price increase
- 4
- Gross margin
- 45
- Marketing cost per lead
- 60
- Overhead this year (rent, admin salaries, software, insurance)
- 550,000
- Annual overhead growth
- 8
- Revenue per employee (your target)
- 180,000
- Cash on hand today
- 250,000
- Days to collect receivables (DSO)
- 30
- Effective tax rate on profit
- 25
Example results
Revenue grows from $2M to $3.4M by Year 3 (29.7% CAGR), with Year-3 EBITDA of $736K (21.6% margin) and $1.2M ending cash.
- Year-3 revenue
- $3,406,261
- Year-3 EBITDA
- $735,778
- Ending cash (Year 3)
- $1,222,590
- Revenue CAGR (Y1-Y3)
- 29.7%
- Year-1 EBITDA margin
- 12.5%
- Marketing cost per new customer
- $240
- Year-3 headcount
- 19
- Lowest year-end cash
- $439,938
What stands out
Operating leverage: EBITDA margin 12.5% -> 21.6%
Revenue compounds at 29.7% a year while overhead grows 8%. Investors will test whether overhead can really stay that flat.
Acquisition cost $240 vs $2,025 gross profit per customer
Each customer returns 8.4x its marketing cost on the first sale. Below 3x, growth consumes cash quickly.
Downside: close rate 5 points lower cuts Year-3 EBITDA to $452K
Versus $736K in the base case. Close rate is the assumption investors will push on hardest.
Next actions
- Back the close-rate assumption (25% rising 1 pts/yr) with 12 months of CRM data; it moves Year-3 EBITDA by $284K per 5 points.
- Plan 7 hires over three years and tie each one to a revenue milestone rather than a date.
- Keep at least 3 months of overhead ($138K) as a cash floor and reinvest the rest in lead growth.
- Build a monthly version of Year 1 with seasonality before sharing with lenders or investors.
Model assumptions & limitations
- Marketing cost scales linearly with leads; in practice cost per lead usually rises as you push volume.
- Gross margin is held constant; headcount = revenue / revenue-per-employee target, rounded up.
- Opening receivables are assumed equal to Year-1 receivables; later years tie up cash as revenue grows (DSO-based).
- Tax is applied to positive EBITDA only; no depreciation, interest, capex, or debt service is modeled.