Industry templates
Start from SaaS, E-commerce, Restaurant, Services, Mobile App templates — pre-filled with sensible defaults.
Financial Planner: startup financial projection software for your first real model
Build a full multi-year financial projection — revenue, costs, P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and loan schedules. Enter your assumptions once and Nautis renders the statements, ratios, and a dashboard with burn rate and runway.
- TemplatesIndustry or blank
- Horizon3 or 5 years
- OutputsP&L, BS, CF, Ratios
app.nautis.io/financial-planner
What is Financial Planner?
Startup financial projection software turns your assumptions about sales, costs and funding into forecast statements. The Nautis Financial Planner builds a 3 or 5 year projection from revenue items, operating costs, starting balances and loans, then calculates the profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and a dashboard with burn rate and runway. You can start from an industry template and export to Excel or PDF.
Investors don't believe your year-five revenue. Nobody does. What they read is whether the assumptions underneath hang together: how many customers, at what price, sold by how many people, paid for with how much cash. A projection is useful when someone can follow it, which is why the Notes tab matters as much as the numbers.
The planner is tab-driven, and order matters. Enter Revenue Items first (unit price, billing frequency, forecast units, cost of goods sold), then Model Inputs (operating expenses with year-over-year growth, non-operating income, other taxes, non-recurring costs, the tax rate and depreciation), then starting balances on Balance Sheet, then any debt on Loan Schedule. Profit & Loss and Cash Flow are calculated, not typed. If a number looks wrong there, fix it at the source.
The Dashboard is where you'll spend time once inputs settle: a revenue trend, an expense pie chart, EBITDA, net profit, gross margin, burn rate, cash runway and year-over-year arrows. For what a reader looks for in a model, our guide on how to read a SaaS financial model is the other side of the table.
Built for
- Founders building their first model for an investor
- Operators forecasting hiring & cash
- Teams plugging projections into a board pack
Capabilities
What you can do with Financial Planner
Everything ships out of the box. No setup, no plugins, no extra tools.
3 or 5 year horizon
Pick the projection period that fits your story.
Full statements
P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, and ratios render automatically from your assumptions.
Burn & runway dashboard
Live dashboard surfaces the numbers investors will actually ask about.
Excel & PDF export
Export to Excel for further modelling or PDF for the board pack.
Use cases
How startups use Financial Planner
The model an investor asked for on Tuesday
Start from the SaaS template so the standard lines are there, set a 3-Year Plan, and replace the template's assumptions with yours. Write one sentence per key assumption on Notes. Send the Excel export, because an investor who wants to check your maths will want cells, not a PDF.
Base case and stressed case
There's no scenario button. Copy the project from the list, rename it "aggressive growth" or "slow hiring", and change the assumptions. Then use Compare to see both side by side. Lower customer growth, higher acquisition cost and a delayed round are the three stress tests worth running first.
Showing what the raise buys
Add the round as a financing inflow on the cash flow side and adjust equity on the balance sheet. The projection shows how much runway the money adds, which is the answer to "why this amount?"
A venture debt or bank loan
Add it on Loan Schedule with principal, interest rate, term and start date. Nautis builds the amortization schedule and flows interest into the P&L and repayments into cash flow, so the runway number reflects the debt.
Quick start
From zero to using Financial Planner
- 1
Pick a template
Industry templates pre-fill revenue items and cost categories — or start blank.
- 2
Enter assumptions
Revenue items, cost categories, headcount, and growth rates.
- 3
Read the statements
P&L, BS, CF, and ratios update automatically.
- 4
Export & share
Excel or PDF — bring the projection into a board pack or a deck.
Startup financial projection software vs a spreadsheet template vs a dedicated planning tool
| Need | Spreadsheet template | Nautis Financial Planner | Dedicated planning tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three statements that tie together | If the formulas are right | P&L and cash flow calculated from your inputs | Yes |
| Start from your business model | Find a template | Blank or industry templates such as SaaS, E-commerce, Services | Usually yes |
| Scenarios | Copy the file | Copy the project and Compare two side by side | Often built in |
| Burn and runway | Build it | Dashboard, from your cash flow | Yes |
| Actuals from accounting | Paste them in | Import revenue from Nautis invoices, otherwise enter manually | Often connects to accounting software |
| Feeds a business plan and investor readiness | No | Links to Business Plans; a model counts in Investor Readiness | Usually separate |
Plans and limits
- The Financial Planner must be enabled on your plan. Creating and editing needs create or update permission and a verified email.
- Every plan starts with a 14-day trial with no card. See pricing.
What Financial Planner doesn't do
- It's a projection tool, not accounting. There's no bookkeeping or tax filing, and actuals only come in from Nautis invoices or by hand.
- Scenarios mean copying the whole project, so changes to the base case don't flow into the copies.
- A dedicated FP&A tool will go deeper on driver-based models, department budgets and accounting sync. If finance is someone's full-time job, compare one.
- The model is only as honest as its assumptions. The software checks the arithmetic, not whether 40% month-over-month growth is believable.
Financial Planner questions
What should startup financial projection software produce for investors?+
A profit and loss, a balance sheet and a cash flow that tie together, plus the burn rate and runway they imply, and a page of assumptions. The Nautis Financial Planner produces all of those, and the Notes tab holds the assumptions.
Should I build a 3-year or 5-year projection?+
Three years for most pre-seed and seed raises, since nobody trusts the later years and they take time to defend. Switch to five under Edit Project if an investor or a business plan format asks for it; your inputs are kept and the extra years follow your growth assumptions.
How is runway calculated in the planner?+
Current cash divided by monthly net burn, where net burn is cash out minus cash in. Both come from the Cash Flow tab. For runway from monthly check-ins of your actual cash and burn rather than a forecast, use Startup Health.
Can my accountant work in the same model?+
Yes. Add them under Shared Access when you create or edit the project and they can edit it live. For a one-off send, use Export Excel.
Which export goes in the data room?+
Usually both. A PDF from Export PDF is a clean read-only copy for the data room. The Excel workbook is for the investor who wants to change an assumption and see what breaks.
Do I need accounting experience to use this?+
It helps, but the templates fill in the standard line items so you can focus on numbers, not category names. Read the Notes tab examples to see what assumptions to document.
Can I change the projection period after creating it?+
Yes. Use Edit Project and switch between 3-Year Plan and 5-Year Plan. Your inputs are preserved; the extra years are projected using your growth assumptions.
How is runway calculated?+
Runway = current cash divided by monthly net burn (cash out minus cash in). Both numbers come from your Cash Flow tab, so keep those inputs accurate.
Can I model a fundraising round?+
Yes — add the inflow as a financing line on the cash flow side and adjust equity on the balance sheet. The projection will show the runway extension and the impact on your balance.
Can I share the project with my accountant?+
Add them via Shared Access when you create or edit the project. They'll see it in their list and can edit. Or use Export Excel for a one-time send.
What happens to my model if I delete a revenue item?+
The P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow recalculate immediately. Nothing else is affected. To keep the line item but switch it off temporarily, set its forecasted units to zero.
Can I import historical numbers?+
Use the import option on Revenue Items to pull from your Invoices module if you've been tracking sales in Nautis. Otherwise enter actuals manually for the first year.
Can I link projections to a business plan?+
Yes. Link the financial project to a business plan, then use Import Data in its Financial Plan section to pull from the projection.
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