Excel templates · For every business
Scenario Analysis Template (Excel) — Best, Base, Worst
The same business, three times: what happens if growth stalls, if it goes to plan, and if it works. Change an assumption at the top and the revenue, the margin, the result and the closing cash all move with it.
The download
Free download
Download: Scenario planning — best / base / worst
- Seven assumptions, all in one block at the top
- Three cases side by side, sharing every formula
- Payroll driven by headcount, not typed in three times
- EBITDA, monthly result and closing cash per case
No email, no sign-up. Formulas already wired up.
The sheet itself
- Seven assumptions, all in one block at the top
- Three cases side by side, sharing every formula
- Payroll driven by headcount, not typed in three times
- EBITDA, monthly result and closing cash per case
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Scenario planning — best / base / worst | |||||||||||||
| 2 | Fill in the blue cells — every other cell is a formula and works itself out. foreqast.app | |||||||||||||
| 3 | Worst | Base | Best | |||||||||||
| 4 | ||||||||||||||
| 5 | €560,000 | €560,000 | €560,000 | |||||||||||
| 6 | -15.0 % | 12.0 % | 35.0 % | |||||||||||
| 7 | 52.0 % | 58.0 % | 62.0 % | |||||||||||
| 8 | 7 | 9 | 12 | |||||||||||
| 9 | €68,000 | €68,000 | €68,000 | |||||||||||
| 10 | €40,000 | €72,000 | €120,000 | |||||||||||
| 11 | €96,000 | €96,000 | €96,000 | |||||||||||
| 12 | ||||||||||||||
| 13 | €476,000 | €627,200 | €756,000 | |||||||||||
| 14 | €247,520 | €363,776 | €468,720 | |||||||||||
| 15 | €476,000 | €612,000 | €816,000 | |||||||||||
| 16 | €-364,480 | €-416,224 | €-563,280 | |||||||||||
| 17 | ||||||||||||||
| 18 | €180,000 | €180,000 | €180,000 | |||||||||||
| 19 | €-30,373 | €-34,685 | €-46,940 | |||||||||||
| 20 | €-184,480 | €-236,224 | €-383,280 | |||||||||||
The blue cells are yours to fill in. Every other cell is a formula and works itself out.
How to use it
- 1
Write the base case first, and make it boring
The base case is what happens if you keep doing what you are doing. If it already contains the new market and the big client, you have three optimistic cases and no baseline.
- 2
Change one assumption at a time
Move growth alone and see what it does. Then margin. A worst case where all seven inputs are pessimistic at once is a case that will never happen and tells you nothing.
- 3
Keep the headcount honest in each case
The best case usually needs more people to deliver, and the worst case is the one where you cannot hire. Payroll is driven off headcount here so that link is explicit.
- 4
Read the worst case's closing cash first
That is the whole reason to build the sheet: the number that tells you whether the downside is survivable, and how much of a buffer it needs.
A worked example
The same company, minus 15% and plus 35%
- Worst — EBITDA
- €-364,400
- Base — EBITDA
- €-274,240
- Best — EBITDA
- €-187,280
- Worst — cash after 12 months
- €-184,400
- Best — cash after 12 months
- €-7,280
Every case is negative, and that is the finding. The cost base — twelve people, €120,000 of ads, €96,000 of fixed costs — is built for a company that does not exist yet in any of the three futures. The best case runs out of money too; it just takes longer. No amount of growth optimism fixes a structure this heavy, and the sheet says so in one row.
The mistakes that break it
Making the worst case a mild base case
If your worst case is “growth of 5% instead of 12%”, you have not modelled a downside. A downside is the quarter a major client leaves.
Leaving costs identical in all three
Growth costs money — more support, more stock, more infrastructure. A best case with the base case's cost line overstates the upside every time.
Building it once and never revisiting it
Scenarios are for deciding, not for filing. If you cannot say today which of the three you are actually tracking, the sheet has stopped working.
Where the template stops
An annual figure hides the month you run out
Dividing EBITDA by twelve is not a cash plan. The worst case may be survivable over a year and still hit zero in month seven.
12-month cash-flow planThree cases is not a range
Reality lands between them, and usually not on any of the three. The value is in the distance between worst and base, not in the numbers themselves.
It is only as current as your last evening with it
Every number in here is typed in. The month you skip is the month the sheet quietly stops describing your business — and it never says so.
What comes after the spreadsheet
Change the ad budgetMove the spend and watch the whole curve move with it — margin, cash and the runway date, not just one cell.Calculators