I’ve been consulting startups for 5 years now. I’ve realized that more than 50% of founders fail – mostly because they didn’t manage cashflow properly.

Companies die because of cash management, not because they do not sell. Knowing how the money comes in and goes out of your startup seems easy, but most people do not give it the importance it should, since a good business plan management is key to your viability and that is precisely why it is so important to plan the cash flow.

Do you have a SaaS startup or are you planning to start one?

If so, you’re going to need a good business plan to keep track of your cash flow, your strategies, and also because any investor will ask for it.

So in this blog post, we’ll share some tips on what to include in your SaaS business plan.

What should a Saas business plan template include?

A SaaS business plan should include at least:

• A cash flow sheet.
• The most important metrics along with the unit economics of a SaaS.
• Financial projections for at least 2 years and if your startup is already out of the early stage, you will also need a profit and loss account.

If you are not sure where to start, we leave our template for you to download. If you have any questions, contact us and we will help you to develop your business plan

Stay with us to learn more about Cash Flow, learn how to control it thanks to our SaaS cash flow management template and its most important kpi.

What is Cash Flow SaaS?

Cash Flow SaaS, as we mentioned above, is the money flowing in and out of your company. It is a particular accounting principle in that it does not include profitability or enterprise value in the calculations, it only focuses on the money coming in or going out of the company.

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any SaaS company. If a company cannot generate a positive cash flow, it must live on rounds of financing and we are already seeing how those times are a bit behind us and healthy growth, with efficiency, is much more valued than those disproportionate growths of yesteryear.

SaaS cash flow is usually differentiated into operating activities, investing activities and financing activities. Each of these is described in detail below.

Cash Flow from operating activities

Operating activities are all the usual operations of the company, distinguished by the fact that they are part of its daily processes that must be fulfilled for its operation.
The cash inflow from operating activities includes the receipt of cash from the sale of our Saas subscriptions.
The outgoing cash flow from operating activities includes the payment of taxes, interest payments, rents, payments to suppliers and other general expenses.

Investment Cash Flow

Investing activities are not limited to the sale of shares, but also include the purchase or sale of assets, both tangible and intangible.

SaaS cash flow from financing activities

Financing activities are understood as the way in which the company finances itself for its activities. Of course, this section includes equity and liability financing.

The inflow Cash Flow from financing activities can be the inflow of a new loan, an external investment or an equity contribution by the partners.

On the other hand, the outgoing cash flow from investing activities can be generated by the repayment of a loan or the repurchase of shares.

SaaS business plan

There are a few key things to remember when creating a SaaS business plan template:

First, the template should be clear and concise and should be easy to read and understand.
Second, the template should include all the key components of a successful SaaS business plan, including, financial projections and strategy for the next few years, as we explained in the beginning of this post.
Finally, make sure you have a professional review your template before finalizing it.
With this cash flow template for SaaS business models it will be much easier for you to manage your cash flow. It is quite complete and easy to fill in.

Saas metrics spreadsheet

You can also use this template to upload metrics to Next Scenario’s SaaS data analysis tool, and you will be able to visualize cool dashboards like these.

Saas Metric visualitation

How to use the business plan template to visualize the metrics of a Saas?

You will only have to upload the file, 🙂 no need to download any more.

How to complete a business plan for Saas and make projections in the business plan?

The cash flow management template for a NS saas is made up of the following sections:

1. Saas BP Real: Main sheet of the cash flow plan for a saas where we monitor the company’s data month by month.
2. Saas BP Forecast: Tab where we make projections for up to 3 years. The first year is monthlyized and a growth factor must be applied to the following projections.
3. Team: Auxiliary tab to fill in the team members of our startup. If someone performs work in several departments, a percentage of his salary can be imputed in each section, very common with C level.
4. Campaigns: Sheet where we allocate the costs of our marketing and sales actions.
5. Tools & Costs: Sheet where we allocate the costs of the tools we use and the general expenses.
6. Import metrics: Sheet that is automatically generated to import the metrics to the Next Scenario data visualization tools (free functionality).

Instructions to fill in the business plan with its explanation:

• Only the columns in blue should be filled in, the blank columns are auto calculated.
• If you do not know all the metrics or data, do not worry, it is not necessary to fill them all.

The detailed sections of the main cashflow tab are explained below:

Acquisition metrics

• Visitors: Web visitors.
• Leads
• New Users (Sign ups): Useful metric for fremium models, calculated with the sum of:
  – Inbound Users: You can leave it empty or if you don’t differentiate the acquisition channels, you can complete one of the two metrics.
  – Outbound Users: Users captured with paid campaigns or sales with commercials. If your model is fremium, otherwise you can leave it empty.
• Total users (Signups beginning of the month)
• m/m growth
• Visitor-to-Signup Conversion Rate:

Monetization and growth metrics

• Customers beginning of the month: Customers beginning of the month
• New customers: Metric calculated from:
  – Inbound Customers:
  – Outbound Customers: Customers captured with paid campaigns or sales with commercials. If your model is fremium, otherwise you can leave it empty.
• Conversion rate lead to customer
• Lost customers: Lost customers.
• Total Customers end of month= Total customers at the end of the month.
• MRR beginning of the month: New customers revenue for each plan.
  – New MRR Plan A
  – New MRR Plan B
  – New MRR Plan C
• Additional incomes(Set up, consulting…): Additional incomes such as set ups, specific developments or consulting.
• New MRR from new customers: New recurring revenues from new customers.
• New MRR from account expansions: New recurring revenue from existing customers for upgrading to a higher plan.
• Total new MRR
• Lost MRR: Lost recurring revenue
• Lost MRR Acount contractions: Lost recurring revenue from customers continuing but downgrading to a lower plan.
• Customer churn:Net new MRR= Net recurring revenue.
• MRR end of month: MRR at the end of the month.
• ARPA= Average revenue per customer
• Sales_cycle_days

Retention metrics

• Active Users beginning of the month (3)
• Active users end of month
• Net new active users
• NPS( Net promoter Score)

Typical saas expenses

GENERAL COST.

General costs of the company. Here we put all the expenses that the company has to carry out its activity.

• Total General Cost: Telephone, servers, tools…

TAXES

Fees and taxes:

• VAT
• Fees and Taxes
• Total taxes

TEAM COST

• Marketing team cost
• Sales Team cost
• Developers and Product team cost
• Customer Service Team cost
• C Level and other teams
• Total Team Cost
• Marketing and sales cost
• Marketing tools
• Sales tools
• Sales campaigns
• Marketing campaigns
• Total CAC (blended with teams): Customer acquisition cost with all campaigns and sales and marketing team costs.
• CAC Campaign marketing = CAC with marketing campaigns only.
• CAC Sales = CAC with sales team costs only.

INVESTMENT

Company’s investments to carry out its activity.

• Laptops
• office furniture
• Other

OTHER INCOMES

Other cash income how:

• Investment rise: Income coming from a new round of investment.
• Cash going in loan: Cash inflow from loans.
• Cash going out loan: Cash outflow from loan repayment.
• Pending capital loan: Capital pending loan.
  

CASH

How much cash do I have in the bank and how much do I spend per month? This section will answer these questions.

• Cash beginning of month: Cash at the beginning of the month.
• Cash coming in: Total income
• Cash going out: Total expenses.
• Net cash burn: Identifies how much money we are spending each month.
• Cash end of month: Cash at the end of the month.
• Runway at current burn (months): Months of life of the company, with current income.

12 month rolling forecast excel template

After filling in your current data, the need arises to project the cash flow to understand what will be the cash needs and the viability of the actions we want to carry out to meet the objectives set.

Saas unit economics excel template

I hope you liked this slightly more technical post, and if so, please share it to help me reach more people.