“Planning and budgeting.” Quick, when you hear that phrase, what springs to mind? Perhaps you envision firing up trustly old Microsoft Excel? Then you open up last year’s budget workbook, change the column headers to next year, increase revenue and expenses by some historical growth percentage and — poof! — you’re done. 

The thing is, this sort of basic forecasting is a poor substitute for proper planning, and you can really only make a good plan (and budget) with a driver-based financial model. “Drivers” are the specific actions you intend to take as a business owner that will increase revenue and/or expenses, such as selling new services and hiring more employees, not arbitrary month-over-month percentage changes.

In this session, we’ll build out a driver-based financial model for an accounting firm that plans to significantly grow their practice with new service offerings and subscription billing options, more than doubling headcount every year for four years. Is that sort of growth possible? The numbers have the answer! Whether you’re new to financial modeling, or you’re doing it now in Excel, this session will equip you with best practices to do better planning for your own firm and your clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the benefits of driver-based financial modeling versus forecasting using historical trends


• Identify and key drivers of revenue, expenses, and cash flows for a professional services firm


• Learn how to program a driver-based financial model that includes Revenue Build, Staffing, OpEx, and COGS tables.


• Generate a forecast report and dashboard that drives thoughtful discussion and planning with your firm partners and stakeholders so you can create a meaningful budget