SaaS Financial Model

The financial model presents the business case of a SaaS online business. Software as a service (SAAS) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SAAS applications are also known as on-demand software and Web-based/Web-hosted software.

This financial model template will enable you to:

- Plan the sources of monetization from self-service, from outbound and inbound sales, their conversion rates, as well as their churn rates

- Forecast the revenues (based on Average Revenue per User from self-service, from outbound and inbound sales)

- Analyze the direct costs for running the website such as credit card costs, servers, and database service costs as well as marketing costs. 

- Setting up payroll costs, and operating expenses.

- Set the initial investment amount and the equipment / servers needed

- Set the relevant currency and timing

- Create the three financial statements (Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow) monthly for 60 months.

- Financial Ratios to check the viability of your business

- Printable model as PDF for your investors

So, a quick overview of the model, in the contents tab you can see the structure of the model and by clicking on any of the headlines to be redirected to the relevant worksheet.

On the timing tab you can feed the general information for the model such as: model name, responsible, timeline of the model and date and currency conventions.

Additionally, there is a description of the color coding of the model in the same tab. Inputs are always depicted with a yellow fill and blue letters, call ups (that is direct links from other cells) are filled in light blue with blue letters while calculations are depicted with white fill and black characters.

There is also a color coding for the various tabs of the model. Yellow tabs are mostly assumptions tabs, grey tabs are calculations tabs, blue tabs are outputs tabs (that is effectively results or graphs) and finally light blue tabs are admin tabs (for example: the cover page, contents, and checks).

Moving on to the inputs tab, you can adjust the various assumptions of the model based on the specifications and requirements of your business. So effectively you can adjust the detailed revenue assumptions and the user can amend the most important drivers such as: organic traffic, paid marketing budget, leads generation budget, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, average revenue per user. Moving on, the cost is comprised of three main categories: direct costs (databases, payment processing, servers, customer support, marketing), labor cost (headcount, salaries, employment costs and other benefits), and operating costs (rent, utilities, insurance, advertising, other supporting tools, etc.). Going forward you can adjust noncurrent assets, capex as well as their depreciation schedule, the working capital assumptions (inventory, receivables, and payables) can also be adjusted accordingly and finally the financing assumptions of the business whether these are debt or equity financed can also be amended.

On the calculation tab, all calculations are performed instantly without the need of an excel macro. The calculations follow the same logical flow as the in the inputs tab. As already mentioned, no inputs from the use are needed here, as all the inputs are fed in the yellow cells on the inputs tab only.

On the Financial Statements tabs you can see the resulting income statement, balance sheet as well as the cash flow of the company and or project. These financial statements are generated on a monthly as well as on a yearly basis.

In the Valuation tab, the valuation of the company is performed based on the free cash flows to the firm. In the same tab you can also find some feasibility metrics such as Return on Equity, Return on Assets, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return and Cash on Cash Multiple.

The most important business and financial KPIs are presented in the KPIs tab along with various valuation metrics. These KPIs are also presented by using some graphical representations in the Graphs tab. For example: Revenues & Operating Profit, Cost of Goods Sold, Cash Flows as well as several other financial metrics from valuation to profitability, working capital and debt. A separate tab which is focused on the various SaaS metrics such as customer acquisition costs, cash burn ratios, customer lifetime value, magic number, SAAS quick ratio, and LTV to CAC ratio.

Finally the checks tab where the most critical checks are aggregated in this page. Whenever you see an error message in any page, you should consult this page to see where the error is coming from.