How forecasts are built
The order bluprnts calculates in — from your drivers, to the forecast statements, to derived figures like runway and breakeven, with scenarios applied across all of it.
Understanding the order bluprnts calculates in makes everything else in these docs easier to follow, and explains why a change in one place moves numbers somewhere apparently unrelated.
1. Your model's time periods#
Every company in bluprnts has a start date, an end date, and a set of forecast periods derived from them. Those periods are the spine of the whole model — every figure in every statement is calculated against them. Change your model's dates and the entire forecast is rebuilt.
2. Your drivers#
These are the things you enter, and the only things you enter:
| Driver | What it contributes |
|---|---|
| Products | What you sell, and the economics of selling it |
| Sales | Volume and timing of revenue |
| Employees | Headcount cost and when it lands |
| Costs | Everything you spend that isn't people |
| Financing | Loans, investment and how they move cash |
| Projects | A discrete initiative modelled with its own economics |
Nothing here is an accounting entry. You describe the business; the accounting is calculated for you.
3. The statements#
From those drivers, bluprnts builds:
- Profit and loss
- Balance sheet
- Cashflow statement
- Bank balance — your cash position over time
- Sales forecast
- Ratios
These are outputs, not inputs. You never type a number into them.
4. Derived figures#
On top of the statements sit the figures you actually run the business on — runway, breakeven, margins, revenue, and cash in and out. They are projections of the statements, which is why they always agree with them.
5. Scenarios, applied across everything#
A scenario adjusts the drivers, and steps 2–4 recalculate against it. That is what makes comparison meaningful: two scenarios are two complete, internally consistent forecasts, not two edits of the same numbers.
Why the numbers are traceable#
Because each layer is calculated from the one before it, every figure has a path back to the drivers that produced it. There are no hidden formulas of the kind a spreadsheet accumulates, which is what lets you — or an investor, lender or auditor — ask why a number is what it is and get a real answer.