Find free startup financial models, or work with our experts to build a customized model for your company!
Healy Jones
Former VC and Startup Operating Expert,
VP of FP&A at Kruze Consulting
Startups create financial models to raise capital, sell to an acquirer or to manage the team’s budget. On this page, you’ll find financial models that you can download and use on your own, tips on how to build a financial model and information on how to work with an outsourced financial modeling firm like Kruze Consulting.
Click here to jump to our free financial model templates that you can use on your own.
Free Model TemplatesKruze Consulting clients have raised over $500 million in venture funding in the past year. Click here to schedule a time to speak with Kruze about a modeling project.
Talk with an ExpertA financial model is the numerical expression of your startup’s goals - how many customers you’ll have, how many people you’ll hire, how your margins will improve. The creation of a financial model should tease out the key metrics and assumptions that you will test as you execute your business plan. The best startup financial models are usually not “right” - but the differences between the projections and the actual results can drive insight into the company’s potential and the targeted industry’s dynamics. Understanding the difference between your projections and your actual results can also help your executive team make important business decisions.
We have created several financial models that you can use for free. These are excel spreadsheets that will help you create projections for your startup, provide the information you need to your 409A valuation firm, think through your cash burn and more. You’ll find helpful modeling tips, how-to instructions and videos below on this page - click here to jump to the modeling help section below. Simply click on the financial model you want to download to get started - they are free! And if you need help with your modeling project, reach out to us at Kruze Consulting and we’ll see if it makes sense to work with us on a consulting project.
Let’s talk about forecasting best practices, that’s building a three-year model that’s dynamic.
Video: What Are the Best Practices to Build a Forecast for Your Startup?
You want your model to easily change assumptions for each year, and you want to include a waterfall throughout the entire sales funnel, that’s going to include conversion rates and unit economics.
This is a best practice that the best CEOs do, because it provides an understanding of resources and effort required to close a sale. You also want to remember to include delays due to sales cycle and customer collections. This is going to affect your cash flows.
Next, you want to stress test your model, conversion rates, growth rates and see what the impacts are. When these start to go sideways, you’re going to be prepared. If not, it can kill your cash. Next, your model should include a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flows. Finally, be honest with yourself in building your model.
In the early days of a startup, projecting cash flow is relatively simple, because it’s a one-way street. Payroll, rent, R&D and maybe some legal costs equal the cash out the door, with no revenue yet to offset the cash burn. Modeling this out in a spreadsheet is easy for most entrepreneurs.
Understanding cash flow gets a lot more complicated when an early-stage company starts servicing clients - and this is where we see super-basic, back of the envelope financial models start to breakdown. There are a few places where revenue-generating clients can “mess up” a nice cash flow model. At this point of your company's life/growth, understanding and being able to model working capital comes into play.
Working Capital = the difference between current assets and current liabilities on a company’s balance sheet. What this really means for most startups is the difference between when a startup gets paid by clients vs. how long it has to pay your expenses.
The timing of payments from clients usually starts pretty simple but can get complicated quickly. Super easy SaaS companies may collect a Stripe bill each month from their clients. Unfortunately, not all billing platforms wire revenue quickly. Some of the app store billing systems wait up to 60 days to share the cash with their app developers. It doesn’t take long before a simple SaaS business has a variety of receivables to wait on from a variety of billing platforms. Fast growth may mean that customer count is spiking (and costs along with it), but with lagging cash collection, even a gross margin positive customer can drain cash for a while.
Purchase orders make selling into the enterprise even harder. Just because a new Fortune 500 client signs a contract does not mean that payment is on the way. Many larger companies have a Purchase Order system that can add on months to the actual receipt of payment. And if different enterprise clients are requesting different invoices or purchase orders, payment can take a long time to show up.
On the positive side, companies that sell annual subscriptions can get large payments upfront. This can really boost cash flow but does create some modeling issues vis a vis deferred revenue and revenue recognition. (We’ve got a whole video on deferred revenue here).
Expenses that companies incurred as they grow sometimes are automatically paid every month (like your monthly bookkeeping cost)- but others may be paid “manually” - as in when the executive in charge of bill pay decides to pay them. Stretching bill payment does have a positive impact on cash flow, but may not be worth the manual effort. Plus, it may annoy your vendors to the point where they stop providing their service, so this is not a great game to play if you are a startup founder.
Thinking through your startup’s working capital will help you have better projections.
Benefits of Budget VS Actuals:
How to Calculate Your Startup’s Cash Out Date
Cash Out Date Tips
2 Burn Rate Accounting Treatments:
Then Think about the Average Time Period to Use To Calculate these numbers?
Information for Every Startup
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Client testimonials
We're huge fans of Vanessa and the folks at Kruze Consulting. They set up our books, finances, and other operations, and are constantly organized and on top of things. As a startup, you have to focus on your product and customers, and Kruze takes care of everything else (which is a massive sigh of relief). I highly highly highly recommend working with Vanessa and her team.
Vivek Sodera
Co-Founder @ Superhuman
As a startup, moving quickly is a top priority for us and we just needed to get our tax return done. After we uploaded our docs, we got our tax return in 3 days! E-filing was confirmed by Day 4. Super responsive and helpful!
Casey McKerchie
VP, Operations of Calm.com
Avochato has been growing rapidly in the past year – in fact, too quickly for us to keep up with books, taxes, and budgeting for growth. Partnering with Kruze Consulting has been fantastic to manage, track, and analyze our finances while we continue focusing on building our customer base. Kruze’s team knows what startups need.
Alex De Simone
CEO @ Avochato
Everybody, go to Kruze Consulting. They do a great job. I personally can tell you, they've done a great job for our companies, including Calm.com. I'm sure they’ll do a great job for you.
Jason Calacanis
Angel investor
I had a great experience working with Kruze Consulting when we raised Series A. They know what VCs need to see, and how to present a startup’s books and finances. If you are going to raise venture capital, you need experts like Kruze.
Chris Mansi
CEO @ Viz.ai
Kruze Consulting is the perfect Accounting, Finance and Tax partner for Los Angeles Startups. Kruze delivers exceptional monthly reporting and financial projections. When we need help with benefits or payroll, Kruze solves our problems. Kruze does our taxes for a fraction of what previous accountants have charged. Thank you Kruze for being a great partner.
Brett O'Brien
CEO @ FLYR
Being a repeat tech entrepreneur, I know how challenging it is to find the ideal CFO - not only is it often expensive to find the right one, but CFOs who combine expertise with scrappiness, market vision and perspective with detail orientation and 'roll up your sleeves' execution is near impossible for an early stage company. So I've been thrilled to work with Kruze Consulting, who not only provide all the ideal characteristics of a top-tier tech CFO, but also live and breathe entrepreneurship themselves. I've known Scott and Vanessa for many years and their deep personal integrity and strong reputation in the industry and made it an easy decision to work with them again.
Tina Fitch
CEO @ HobNob
NIH, NSF, and SBIR grant compliance can add a lot of overhead for a start-up. The Kruze team makes it easy, so we can spend our time growing the business instead of shoveling paperwork.
Charlie Silver
CEO @ Mission Bio
As a startup, it’s incredibly important to keep track of where our money is coming from and where it’s being spent. Kruze Consulting really helps keep our books and taxes in order so that we can focus on the core business. Extremely responsive and very professional, the accountants at Kruze Consulting are a pleasure to work with. We’d highly recommend their services.
Peter Lai
CEO @ Emburse
Prior to Kruze, as a remote-first team, we were weighed down by a lot of the bureaucracy involved with having a distributed workforce. Kruze has supported us above and beyond basic accounting needs by ensuring we have everything we need to expand and support our team wherever they may be located
Zack Fisch
Pequity's Head of Operations & Legal
Startups are our niche, and our passion. Our clients have raised over $4.5 billion in venture capital financing. We are one of only a few outsourced accounting firms that specialize in funded early-stage companies - we only offer financial and tax services to fast growing startups in the Seed, Series A, Series B and Series C stages.
We know how to de-risk your startup’s next venture capital round. Our team makes sure you are ready to fly through your next VC’s accounting, HR and tax due diligence. And when you use us as your bookkeeper, we set up and keep up-to-date a due diligence folder so you can get that next round of fundraising.
Our practice is built on best of breed cloud accounting software like QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, Gusto, Zenefits, Expensify, Avalara, Brex iand Bill.com. Technology makes us more efficient, saving our clients money and letting us offer higher value services like FP&A modeling, 409A valuation and venture debt consulting. Startups deserve to work with CPAs using modern software.
Top angel investors and VCs refer Kruze because they trust us to give the right advice. Our clients are portfolio companies of top technology and Silicon Valley investors, including Y-Combinator, Kleiner, Sequoia, Khsola, Launch, Techstars and more. With us, your books and taxes are in order when it’s time to raise another round of venture financing.
Kruze Consulting works with a variety of funded Delaware C-Corps, but the majority of our companies have secured Seed, Series A, Series B and Series C. We look to partner with our clients, going beyond the typical outsourced accounting relationship and seeking to provide a higher level advisory role. We feel honored to be a part of making the world a better place, even if it’s one debit and credit at a time.
Startup CFO services, startup accounting and bookkeeping services, startup annual taxes, expense reports, payroll, benefits: we've got you covered. Our software provides custom tailored dashboards that can be provided weekly or monthly, depending on your preference and plan. Founders are often so busy building their company that they don’t have time to take care of their finances. Traditionally, these companies have had to work with a basket of people to get their work done, including bookkeepers, accountants, AP clerks, CFOs, consultants, and tax accountants. At Kruze Consulting, our founders have one point person, saving time and money.
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