How Does Sales Forecasting Work in Your Startup Pro Forma App?

Q: Can you please explain in more detail how the sales forecasting works in the Startup Financial Model business plan pro forma? What happens after I input my assumptions and how does all of that get calculated? Do I need to do any offline calculations in terms of price x unit sales in order to figure this out or is that done for me?

A: Your sales results by unit and revenue will be calculated for you once you enter your Offering assumptions and you do not need to perform any offline calculations. The model is built up on a unit economic basis, so all you need to do is enter the assumptions in the Offering input as follows:

In terms of the actual sales forecast input, all you need to do is choose a forecasting methodology (sales channel, website conversion rates, auto-fill (which creates your forecast for you with a few inputs), a month-by-month entry of unit sales for each of the 60 months, or link to another offering's sales forecast) in order to forecast your unit sales.

Once all of your assumptions are entered, calculate your pro forma and then go to the Sales portion in the Reports section to view the detail for each offering. You can see the month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter, and year-over-year results. The report includes comprehensive CLTV analysis and shows the cash and deferred revenue impact of your billing and collection option.