Edit a scenario's assumptions
Pull the levers on a bluprnts scenario — volume, price, costs, headcount, pay, payment timing and funding — and target a change at one product or team.
A scenario's assumptions are set with levers on the workbench. Each lever bends one assumption across the whole forecast, leaving the plan itself untouched. Centre is no change from base, so a lever's position always reads as a difference rather than a value, and the impact panel beside it always reads as a difference too.
Open a scenario in the workbench#
Select a scenario in the rail, or choose Edit levers from its ⋯ menu. Make sure the page header is on Build rather than Compare.
Selecting Base shows the read-only baseline view instead: the levers are disabled and the panel beside them shows Baseline figures — "Your plan as it stands today". You cannot edit base from here. To change it, change the plan on the Products, Sales, Employees, Costs and Financing pages.
The eleven levers#
| Group | Lever | What it bends | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales | Sale volume | Units sold across all products | ±100% |
| Sales | Sale price | Average price per unit | ±100% |
| Costs | Production cost | Cost to make each unit | ±100% |
| Costs | Storage & distribution | Logistics and warehousing | ±100% |
| Costs | Shipping | Cost to ship each unit | ±100% |
| Costs | Overheads | Rent, software, fixed costs | ±100% |
| People | Headcount | Add or cut roles vs plan | ±100% |
| People | Average salary | Compensation per employee | ±100% |
| Timing & funding | Customer pay delay | Extra days customers take to pay | ±90 days |
| Timing & funding | Supplier pay delay | Extra days you take to pay suppliers | ±90 days |
| Timing & funding | New funding | One-off capital injection | £0 – £1,000,000, in £25,000 steps |
The two payment-delay levers are the ones people underuse. They move nothing on the profit and loss — a sale is still a sale — but they move cash, which is usually the thing that actually constrains the business. New funding is received in full in the first forecast period.
Target a change at one product or team#
Global levers move everything at once. Targeted Impacts, below the levers, narrows a change to a specific part of the business — "+20% headcount, sales team only" — while everything you have not targeted keeps following the levers above.
Select + Add and set three things: the metric, the scope it applies to, and the percentage.
| Metric | Can be scoped to |
|---|---|
| Sale volume, sale price, production cost, storage & distribution, shipping | A product or a channel |
| Headcount, average salary | A department or a role |
| Fixed costs | A cost or a cost type |
A targeted rule replaces the global lever for anything it matches — the two don't add together. Where several rules could match the same thing for the same metric, the most specific wins, in this order:
product → role → cost → channel → department → cost type
So a rule on one product beats a rule on the channel that product sells through.
Targeted impacts only appear once your plan has something to target.
When a lever goes inert#
If your targeted rules end up covering every entity a lever moves, the lever has nothing left to act on. bluprnts says so on the lever itself:
Overridden everywhere by targeted changes below — this lever has no effect right now.
That is a notice, not an error — it means the scoped rules are doing all the work, and dragging the lever will change nothing until one of them is removed.
Read the impact as you go#
The panel beside the levers is titled Forecast impact and updates live — "Live · full forecast period vs base". It shows, for the whole forecast period:
| Row | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Total revenue | Cumulative over the period |
| Gross margin | As a percentage of revenue |
| Profit after tax | After all costs |
| Closing balance | Bank at period end |
| Max cash needed | The lowest point the balance reaches |
Each row gives the scenario's figure, the difference against base, and a bar showing how far it has moved. Above them, a chart plots cumulative profit after tax for this plan as a solid line against base as a dashed one. Below them, a one-line verdict says whether the scenario leaves the business better or worse off, and flags it if cash is the problem.
Max cash needed is the row to watch. A scenario can improve every other line and still be unaffordable, because the deepest point of the cash curve is what you actually have to fund.
Reset#
Reset all returns every lever on the open draft to centre. It affects the draft you are editing, not your plan, and it does not touch targeted changes — remove those individually with the × on each row.
Changes are not live until you Save.
Related#
- Compare scenarios side by side — put several sets of assumptions against each other.
- Set the working case — apply one across the app.
- Payment terms — the base debtor and creditor terms the delay levers shift.