Your financial projections in 7 days
A complete 3 to 5 year model, ready for your banker, your investors, or the sale of your business.
Translate your strategy into numbers you can defend in front of a banker or investor.
Connect commercial assumptions, profitability, and cash flow in a single model.
Build a management tool that lives with the business, not a throwaway document.
Financial projections translate your strategy into verifiable numbers over three to five years. They condition access to financing, support the price in a sale, and, when maintained, become the owner's primary steering tool.
See all our deliverablesWhat are financial projections for in the life of a business?
Convince a lender in a financing file
A bank lends against future repayment capacity, not the past. Rigorous projections demonstrate that cash flows will cover debt service year after year, including under a conservative scenario. Without that work, the file rests on an intuition the credit analyst cannot defend to their committee.
Support your asking price in a business sale
A serious buyer purchases the years ahead, not the years behind. Projections show how the business generates value after the transaction and give the price a rational foundation. A seller who presents a documented model negotiates over assumptions rather than impressions, which fundamentally changes the nature of the conversation.
Structure a credible fundraising round
Investors first evaluate the quality of the reasoning behind the numbers: customer acquisition logic, margins by segment, capital requirements, and the path to profitability. A model built line by line inspires confidence in the team as much as in the project. An optimistic spreadsheet with no foundation produces the opposite effect.
Steer the business day to day
Beyond transactions, projections become the owner's dashboard: they set measurable objectives, reveal the gaps between plan and reality, and let you correct course before problems become visible in the financial statements.
Projections are not an accounting exercise
Many projection files simply extend last year's numbers with a growth percentage. That kind of exercise convinces no one and helps no decision. Real projections articulate three inseparable dimensions: financial mechanics, commercial dynamics, and operational reality. They tell the story of how the business wins customers, loses some, produces, invests, and turns all of it into cash. That articulation is what gives the document its value in front of a banker, an investor, or a buyer.
What separates strong projections from weak ones?
The difference lies neither in the software used nor in the sophistication of the formulas. It lies in the traceability of the reasoning: a demanding reader must be able to trace every projected figure back to the assumption that justifies it, and every assumption back to an observable reality of the business.
A single growth rate applied uniformly to total revenue, with no explanation.
Revenue built by segment, product, or customer, where each growth assumption is tied to a concrete action: hiring a salesperson, opening a territory, launching an offer.
One scenario, usually optimistic, presented as a certainty.
Three scenarios built on the same levers: a realistic base case, a conservative case that stress-tests cash, and a favourable case that shows the potential without promising it.
An income statement in isolation, with no balance sheet or cash flow.
Three projected financial statements reconciled with each other. A profitable business can still run out of cash; only a complete model reveals that risk before it materializes.
Invisible assumptions, buried inside the spreadsheet formulas.
Assumptions grouped, documented, and adjustable in one place, so the reader understands the reasoning and can test their own convictions.
A frozen model, produced for one occasion and then abandoned.
A living tool, updated with actual results, that gains precision every quarter and becomes the financial memory of the business.
The three dimensions strong projections must integrate
The financial dimension
Revenue, direct costs, fixed expenses, capital expenditures, depreciation, financing, taxes, and free cash flow. This is the mechanics of the model: every line must reconcile with the other two financial statements and reflect the real structure of the business.
The commercial dimension
New customer wins, losses and attrition, average order value, pricing, renewal rates, sales cycle, and team capacity. A projection that ignores commercial dynamics implicitly assumes today's customers will stay forever and growth will fall from the sky. It is the most common blind spot in amateur models.
The operational dimension
Hiring and payroll, production or delivery capacity, equipment investments, and the working capital that growth consumes. An order book that doubles requires financing before it generates cash: the model must make that reality visible.
How do you keep your projections alive and maintained?
A projection model delivers most of its value after it is created, provided it is maintained. The file abandoned in a folder once the loan is approved loses all usefulness; the one confronted with reality every quarter becomes a management instrument whose precision improves year after year.
Compare actuals to plan, every month or quarter
The highest-return exercise is the simplest: place actual results next to projected figures and understand every significant variance. A variance is not a failure; it is information. It reveals an assumption to correct, a market that is moving, or execution that needs tightening.
Revise the assumptions, not just the numbers
When reality drifts from the plan, the temptation is to adjust the totals so the file looks presentable. The better practice is to trace back to the faulty assumption: the conversion rate was too ambitious, customers pay later than expected, acquisition costs were underestimated. That is how the model learns.
Roll the horizon forward and keep the history
Each completed year becomes a year of history, and a new projection year is added to the horizon. Keeping earlier versions lets you measure the quality of your forecasting over time, a signal that bankers and buyers value highly.
A steering tool, objectives, and decision support
Properly maintained, projections stop being a document and become a management discipline. They give the owner what SMEs most often lack: quantified objectives shared across the organization and a framework for evaluating every important decision before executing it.
Annual objectives translated into concrete monthly targets for the team: sales, margin, hiring, cash.
A common language between the owner, the accountant, and financial partners, grounded in the same numbers.
The ability to simulate a decision before making it: what happens if we hire now, if we lose this customer, if we raise prices?
An early warning signal on cash, months before the bank account shows it.
A structured discussion support for the board, business partners, or the next generation in a family transfer.
Common mistakes in financial projections
Projecting growth without projecting attrition: every customer portfolio naturally loses accounts each year.
Confusing profit with cash, and discovering too late that growth consumes liquidity.
Ignoring working capital: inventory, receivables, and payment terms absorb financing well before profits arrive.
Presenting a single optimistic scenario to a lender who will systematically reason from the downside case.
Building a file so complex that nobody, not even its author, can update it six months later.
Letting the projections die once financing is secured, when their steering value begins precisely at that moment.
How Hadaly builds your financial projections
Start from your real data
The model rests on your historical financial statements, the composition of your revenue, and the real structure of your costs. Every assumption about growth, margin, or attrition is anchored in what the business has demonstrated, not in a generic industry average.
Connect projections, valuation, and transaction readiness
Projections gain credibility when they align with the business valuation, normalized EBITDA, the CIM, and the other deal materials. Hadaly builds the whole set consistently, so a banker or buyer finds the same assumptions everywhere.
Deliver a file you can keep alive
The deliverable is a complete, structured, documented Excel model: three reconciled financial statements, grouped and adjustable assumptions, multiple scenarios. It belongs to you and remains usable for management long after the financing or the transaction.
Financial projections FAQ
How many years should projections cover?
Three to five years is the standard for financing, business sales, and fundraising. The first year benefits from monthly detail, subsequent years from quarterly or annual figures. Beyond five years, precision becomes illusory except in certain long-contract industries.
What is the difference between a budget and financial projections?
A budget is a spending commitment for one fiscal year, usually the year ahead. Projections cover a longer horizon, integrate all three financial statements, and are used to evaluate scenarios. Ideally, the budget flows from the first year of the projections.
Should projections include commercial elements?
Yes, and it is what separates a credible model from an accounting exercise. Projected revenue must rest on explicit assumptions about new customer wins, losses and attrition, pricing evolution, and sales team capacity. Without that commercial foundation, projected growth is only a wish.
How often should projections be updated?
A comparison of actuals to plan every month or quarter, and a deep revision of assumptions at least once a year or upon a major event: loss of a key customer, new financing, an acquisition, or a market shift.
Do bankers really look at projections?
Yes, and they look above all at how they are built. A credit analyst stress-tests debt service coverage in a conservative scenario, checks consistency across the three statements, and assesses the realism of the assumptions. A rigorous model accelerates approval; an improvised spreadsheet undermines it.
What does Hadaly actually deliver?
A complete financial model delivered in Excel: three projected and reconciled financial statements, documented and adjustable assumptions, multiple scenarios, and free cash flow. The file belongs to you and remains usable for management after the transaction or financing.
Projections that support your ambitions
Hadaly builds a rigorous financial model, anchored in your real numbers and consistent with your entire file, whether you are preparing financing, a sale, or simply the next stage of your growth.
The content presented here is informational and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice.