What the model has to answer at each stage
The right tool follows from the question on your desk. That question changes with each round, and so does what the model needs to hold.
Buyer's guide
Financial modeling software for startups: spreadsheet, suite or live runway?
Before you raise, you mostly need a runway number you trust, and a template or a live runway tool gives you that. When you raise, you need a real month-by-month model, built in a spreadsheet or a startup modelling tool. An FP&A suite pays off once someone owns finance full time and the books are clean enough to feed it.
Vendor details below were checked on each vendor's own site on 27 September 2026.
| Stage | The question | What the model needs | Enough tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed, pre-revenue | How long does the cash last, and what does the next hire do to it? | Cash, monthly costs, the team, one scenario | A simple sheet or a live runway tool |
| Seed, raising or just raised | Does this round get us to what the next round needs? | 18 to 24 months, month by month: hiring with start dates, revenue drivers, churn, use of funds, two or three scenarios | A spreadsheet model or a startup modelling tool |
| Series A and later | Are we on plan, and if not, why? | Three statements, actuals from the books against plan, department budgets, board reporting | An FP&A suite, run by a finance person |
One company, three answers
Take a seed-stage SaaS company with €600,000 in the bank, €48,000 of monthly costs and €9,000 of MRR. Net burn is €39,000 a month, so runway is 600,000 / 39,000 = 15.4 months. The founders want two engineers at €7,500 a month each, fully loaded, starting in month four, and they expect MRR to grow 6% a month.
A live runway tool answers from today's numbers. Add the hires as a €15,000 a month plan and burn becomes €54,000, so runway reads 600,000 / 54,000 = 11.1 months. That is how Plainhub compares a draft plan: as if it started today, with revenue flat.
A month-by-month spreadsheet knows the hires start in month four. Three months at €39,000 spends €117,000, the remaining €483,000 lasts 8.9 months at €54,000, and runway is 11.9 months.
The same spreadsheet with 6% monthly growth lifts MRR to about €17,100 by month twelve and runway to 12.9 months.
The growth assumption, which takes most of the modelling effort, moved the answer by one month. The conservative 11.1 is the number to plan a raise around, because a raise takes months and growth is the assumption most likely to slip. The full model earns its place in the raise itself, where an investor will want the hiring plan and the revenue drivers behind the 12.9.
The mistake that catches founders out
Building the investor model, then running the company off it. The model is right on the day it is finished. Three months later the hire started late, a customer churned and a tool got cancelled, and the runway tab still says what it said in the data room. Keep two things apart: a model you rebuild when you raise, and a runway number you update as money moves.
The real options
Spreadsheet templates
Free or close to it, and every investor can open the file. Slidebean offers a free startup financial model template with sheets for revenue, cost of goods, operating costs and capital spend. Hemrock (the old foresight.is address now redirects there) publishes open-source financial model spreadsheets on a pay-what-you-want basis. For the next thirteen weeks of cash rather than a full model, Graphite Financial has a free 13-week cash flow template for Excel and Google Sheets.
A template works at any stage if someone maintains it. What goes wrong is formulas that break quietly as the file grows, and a model nobody opens between rounds.
Startup modelling tools
These replace the spreadsheet with a guided model. Sturppy Planning is aimed at early-stage founders building an investor-ready model without Excel skills; you can share a live read-only link with investors and export the model to CSV. Its Sturppy Plus tier connects live data and adds an AI CFO chat. Forecastr sells its software together with a dedicated finance expert, and its pricing page lists Essentials at $5,000 a year and Growth at $10,000 a year.
They suit a seed raise when you would rather not build the model from scratch. You still own the assumptions, and a guided model is only as good as the growth rate you type into it.
FP&A suites
Budgeting, actuals against plan and reporting, fed by your accounting, payroll and CRM data. Abacum describes itself as an AI-native FP&A platform built for CFOs, with more than 700 integrations. Cube works inside Excel and Google Sheets and quotes every plan on request. Two names founders still search for have moved: Causal joined the Lucanet Group in October 2024 and now sits inside Lucanet's extended planning product, and Finmark belongs to BILL, with finmark.com redirecting to bill.com. Finmark's help centre says its payroll integrations were discontinued from 30 July 2025. The old mosaic.tech address now leads to HiBob's FP&A product.
A suite makes sense with a finance hire, clean books and a board that wants variance analysis. Bought before anyone has time to run it, it sits empty. The suites are compared one by one in best FP&A software, and when you don't need it yet.
A live runway tool
This is where Plainhub sits. You record money in and out in plain words, add the team on the People page and customers with their status, and runway, burn and MRR recompute on every change. A draft plan shows runway and the cash-out date before and after, up to three side by side, and committing it adds it to burn from its start date. There is no bank login and no accounting integration. Pro is €29.99 a month; Max, at €59.99, adds a PDF report with a twelve-month straight-line cash projection.
Where Plainhub fits, and where it does not
- It projects in a straight line from this month. It does not model revenue growth, seasonality or a hire that starts in March, so in the example it says 11.1 months where a model says 12.9.
- It has no profit and loss statement, balance sheet or cash flow statement, and it does not read your books, so it cannot show actuals against a budget.
- A raise is not modelled as incoming cash. When the money lands, you update the cash balance.
- It is not an investor document. For the raise, use a template or a modelling tool, then keep the live numbers in Plainhub once the round closes.
| Option | Examples | What it costs you | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet template | Slidebean, Hemrock, Graphite 13-week | Free or pay what you want, plus your upkeep | A full model you control |
| Startup modelling tool | Sturppy, Forecastr | Sturppy sells plans and a lifetime deal; Forecastr from $5,000 a year with an analyst | An investor model without building it cell by cell |
| FP&A suite | Abacum, Cube, Lucanet (Causal), Finmark | Mostly priced on request, plus a person to run it | Plan against actuals once the books are clean |
| Live runway tool | Plainhub | €29.99 or €59.99 a month and a few minutes a week | Runway, burn and MRR kept current between raises |
What to do next
Put your own cash, costs and revenue into the cash runway calculator and note the number. If you are about to hire, run the person through the employee cost calculator first, because the loaded cost is what goes into burn. If you are about to raise, size the round backwards from runway with how much runway to raise for, then build the model in a template or a modelling tool.
Questions founders ask
Do I need a three-statement model at pre-seed?
Usually not. Before you raise, the decisions are how long the cash lasts and what the next hire does to it, and a runway number answers both. Build the full model when you raise, because that is when someone will read it.
What happened to Causal and Finmark?
Causal joined the Lucanet Group in October 2024, and causal.app now points to Lucanet's extended planning product. BILL completed its acquisition of Finmark, finmark.com now redirects to bill.com, and the Finmark help centre is still online. We found no primary source for a Finmark shutdown date, so check with BILL before you plan around one.
Can Plainhub replace my financial model?
Not for a raise. Plainhub projects in a straight line from this month's burn and revenue, with no growth assumptions, no three statements and no month-by-month hiring timeline. It replaces the weekly job of updating the runway tab; the investor model is a separate document.
Is Excel or Google Sheets enough?
For the model itself, often yes, and a good template saves most of the work. The weak point is upkeep: a sheet is right the day you update it. If nobody updates it between board meetings, keep the model for fundraising and track the live numbers somewhere that stays current.
Keep the runway side live
Seven questions give you your runway, with no card and no bank login. The demo on the homepage runs the real app on a sample company if you want to look first.