Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Every small business should have a 3 statement model. Most don't. Here's why that's a problem.

I see this all the time.

Business owner pulls up QuickBooks. Looks at the P&L. "Revenue's up. Expenses look fine. We're good."

Two weeks later they're scrambling to make payroll. Sound familiar?

That's what happens when you only look at one piece of the picture.

Let me break this down.

Your P&L tells you if you're profitable. Cool. But profit doesn't pay bills. Cash does. And your P&L doesn't show you where the cash went.

That's what the cash flow statement is for.

Your balance sheet tells you what you own and what you owe. Also useful. But without connecting it to cash flow, you're just staring at numbers wondering why your bank account doesn't match what you expected.

Here's where it clicks.

When all three statements are linked, everything makes sense. Profit flows to retained earnings. Retained earnings sits on the balance sheet. Changes in balance sheet accounts explain your cash movement.

It all ties together.

Sounds complicated. It's really not. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

And the decisions get so much easier after that.

Should I hire? Check the model. Can I afford that equipment? Check the model. What happens if revenue drops 20%? Run the scenario. Takes five minutes.

No more guessing. No more "let me check with my accountant and get back to you." You just know.

Every small business should have this. Not just the ones raising money. Not just the ones with fancy CFOs. Everyone.

And you don't need to build it from scratch.

Model Wiz is a free Excel add-in that allows you to connect your QuickBooks Online, pull your data, and gives you a full 3 statement model. Income statement. Balance sheet. Cash flow. All connected. All updating automatically.

Does your business have all three statements linked?

5 hours ago | [YT] | 49

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

I believe design often matters more than data. Controversial? Maybe. But I've seen too many great analyses get ignored because the spreadsheet looked like a mess.

Here's what I mean.

You spend hours building a model. The numbers are perfect. Every formula checks out. You're proud of it.

Then you send it to the CEO. They glance at it for 10 seconds. "Can you walk me through this?"

That's not a data problem. That's a design problem.

I've been on both sides of this. Trust me.

Early in my career I built models that were technically perfect. And technically unreadable. Tiny fonts. No white space. Colors everywhere.

Looked like a ransom note made in Excel. Not my finest work.

Nobody trusted them. Not because the numbers were wrong. Because they looked wrong. Big difference.

Now I think about design first. Numbers second.

Clean headers. Consistent formatting. White space so people can actually breathe. Colors that mean something. Green for good. Red for bad.

Simple stuff. Changes everything.

The data doesn't change. But the reaction does. Night and day.

Here's the thing though.

Your board doesn't read spreadsheets. They scan them. If they can't figure out what's going on in five seconds, they stop trying. On to the next slide.

And that brilliant analysis you spent all week on? Ignored. Painful.

I obsess over this stuff now. Every dashboard. Every model. Every report. If it doesn't look trustworthy, it doesn't matter how accurate it is.

That's one of the reasons I built Model Wiz the way I did.

Model Wiz is a free Excel add-in that allows you to connect your QuickBooks Online, pull your data, and the dashboards already look clean. Formatting done. Colors set. Just connect and it's presentation-ready.

What's the worst formatted spreadsheet you've ever received?

1 day ago | [YT] | 66

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

This ARR dashboard is one of our best selling templates at $63.
It tracks 20+ SaaS metrics at monthly, quarterly, and annual granularity.

Today you can have it for free 👇
chargeover.com/go/saas-dashboard-template

I manage 35 to 40 SaaS startups as a fractional CFO.

And I see the SAME problem at almost every single one.

They show up to the board meeting, present ARR growth, and someone asks: "How much of that came from new logos vs. expansion?"

Silence.

I've watched that exact moment play out more times than I can count.

They don't have the waterfall. They don't have the breakdown. They just have... a number.

Or they tell stakeholders net retention is "healthy." But when someone asks for a quarterly breakdown? Scramble mode.

Four spreadsheets.

Manual reconciliation. And they're STILL not confident the numbers are right.

We've all been there.

And here's the one that gets me every time.

CAC payback quietly stretching from 6 months to 14. Nobody catches it because the data lives across three different systems.

Now this template can fix all of that. But even the best dashboard in the world is useless if the data feeding it is wrong.

And for SaaS companies, that data starts with billing. If your subscription changes aren't being tracked properly, every metric in your dashboard is WRONG.

So I partnered with ChargeOver on this. They handle billing and subscription management for SaaS companies. Your invoicing, dunning, collections... all automated. Every upgrade, downgrade, and cancellation gets tracked.

Clean data in. Accurate metrics out.

What's Inside

→ Full ARR waterfall. New, expansion, contraction, and churn in one view. You'll see EXACTLY where your growth is coming from and where it's leaking.

→ Logo movements tracked separately from revenue. Your customer count can grow while revenue churn tells a completely different story. This catches that.

→ NRR, GRR, and gross churn calculated automatically. You'll KNOW your retention numbers cold.

→ Sales efficiency. CAC ratio, CAC payback, CLTV. So you know whether every acquisition dollar is actually worth it.

→ Labor efficiency. ARR per head, headcount costs by department. You'll finally connect revenue growth to team economics.

And it comes pre loaded with sample data modeling a subscription business from $1M to $1.4M ARR.

You can open it and see how the whole thing works before entering a single number of your own.

===

Next board meeting, you walk in with every SaaS metric your stakeholders ask for.

One dashboard. No scramble.

Grab it here 👉 chargeover.com/go/saas-dashboard-template

This post is sponsored by ChargeOver.

4 days ago | [YT] | 82

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

🚨 Free Webinar Tomorrow

I’m breaking down the exact CFO reporting system I use to understand what’s happening in a business — and more importantly, what’s coming next.

You’ll also get the full template (KPI dashboard, forecasts, budget vs actuals, and more) when you join live.

📅 Monday, March 30th @ 2 PM EST

Save your spot here: www.yourcfoguy.com/webinar-the-ultimate-cfo-report…

If you care about real visibility into your numbers, don’t miss this.

1 week ago | [YT] | 112

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Budget vs Actuals. Every board asks for it. Most dashboards make it harder than it needs to be.

You know the drill.

Board meeting coming up. Someone asks "did we hit budget?" And suddenly you're pulling numbers from three tabs, building a comparison table, checking the variances twice because you don't trust yourself, formatting everything so it doesn't look like a disaster.

Every. Single. Month.

There's a better way. Let me show you.

Left side of this dashboard. Full P&L breakdown. Budget column. Actual column. Variance in dollars. Variance in percentage. All right there. No switching tabs. No "give me one second."

Revenue. COGS. Gross Profit. Gross Margin. Then every OpEx line. Advertising. G&A. Software. Professional Fees. Headcount. Travel. All the way down to Net Income.

You see exactly where you hit and where you missed. Done.

Now check the right side. This is my favorite part.

Four visual cards. Revenue. Net Income. Cash Burn. Ending Cash. Each one with a little donut chart showing how close you got.

Revenue missed by 10%. Ouch. Net Income missed by 72%. Double ouch. But Cash Burn? Saved 39%. Ending Cash up 4%. Not all bad news.

Your eye goes straight to what matters. Green means good. Miss means problem. Nobody's doing math in their head.

Here's why this format works.

Numbers on the left for the detail people. Visuals on the right for the "just give me the headline" people. Everyone gets what they need. Nobody's asking you to "break that down for me."

I've sat in meetings where the CFO walked through Budget vs Actuals line by line. Twenty minutes. Eyes everywhere. Questions piling up. At the end someone still asks "so did we hit budget or not?"

Not great.

With this? Pull it up. Point at the donuts. Move on. Beautiful.

Now look. Building this manually is annoying. The formulas. The formatting. The donut charts that never align properly. Spent way too many hours on that.

So I built it into Model Wiz.

Model Wiz is a free Excel add-in that allows you to connect your QuickBooks Online, pull your data, and this dashboard just populates. Budget vs Actuals ready to go. Variances calculated. Visuals already built. Just connect and it's yours.

How long does your Budget vs Actuals take to build each month?

1 week ago | [YT] | 89

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

This KPI dashboard answers every question my board asks. All on one screen.

Not 10 tabs. Not 47 charts. Not a spreadsheet that makes everyone squint. One screen. Eight numbers. That's it.

Let me show you what I mean.

Top row. Revenue. How much came in. COGS right next to it. What it cost to deliver. Then Gross Profit and Gross Margin. You know, the stuff that tells you if your actual business works.

Bottom row. Opex. What you spent to run the thing. Net Income. What's left after everything. Cash Flows. What actually moved. Ending Cash. What's sitting in the bank right now.

Eight cards. Eight answers. No hunting.

Now check the top right of the image. See those checkboxes? Prior Period. Prior Year. Budget.

Click one and every card updates. Variances show up. Percentages populate. The whole dashboard shifts.

Board wants to compare this month to last year? One click. Want to add budget comparison? Another click. Nobody's waiting. Nobody's asking you to "pull that up real quick."

Here's why I love this format.

Boards don't want to dig. They really don't. They want to glance and get it. "Are we up or down? By how much? Compared to what?"

This answers all of that. Before anyone even asks.

I've sat in meetings where the CFO spent 20 minutes walking through financials. Slides everywhere. Numbers flying. Eyes glazing over. And at the end someone still asks "so... are we doing okay?"

Not great.

With this? Pull it up. Everyone gets it. Conversation moves forward. Beautiful.

Less time explaining. More time deciding. That's the whole point.

This exact dashboard is inside Model Wiz.

Model Wiz is a free Excel add-in that allows you to connect your QuickBooks Online, pull your data, and this dashboard just populates. Eight KPIs ready to go. Comparisons built in. Checkboxes already working. Just connect and it's yours.

What does your board see first when you present financials?

1 week ago | [YT] | 84

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Excel has checkboxes. Most finance teams have no idea. Here's what they're missing.

Not filters. Not dropdowns. Checkboxes.

Click a box. Dashboard updates. That's it. Sounds simple because it is.

Let me show you two dashboards where this actually matters.

First one. Comparison Dashboard.

Check the image. See those little boxes at the top? "Prior Period" and "Budget." Click one and the whole thing updates. Revenue comparisons. Variance percentages. Trend indicators. All of it.

No rebuilding three versions of the same dashboard. No switching tabs when the board asks "what about compared to budget?" Just click. Done. Move on.

I can't tell you how many hours I wasted before I figured this out. Actually I can. Too many.

Second one. Department Filter Dashboard.

Look at the left side. See those checkboxes next to each department? Engineering. Finance. Sales & Marketing. Human Resources. All of them.

Check the ones you want. P&L recalculates instantly. Only shows what's checked. Totals update on their own.

Board wants to see just Engineering and Sales? Two clicks. Five minutes later they want to add Finance? One more click. Nobody's waiting. Nobody's rebuilding anything.

And here's what I really love about this.

Filters hide data. Checkboxes control it. Big difference. With checkboxes you have an audit trail. You can see exactly which departments were included. Filters don't give you that.

Now look. Setting this up manually is annoying. The named ranges. The IF formulas. Getting everything to link properly. It takes time.

So I built both dashboards into Model Wiz.

Model Wiz is a free Excel add-in that allows you to connect your QuickBooks Online, pull your data, and these dashboards just work. Checkboxes already set up. Formulas already written. Just connect and start clicking.

What Excel feature took you way too long to discover?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 81

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Your financial model has an error right now. You just haven't found it yet.

I know because I've been there.

I once spent days building a model for a client. Board meeting. Next 12 months of projections. Felt great about it.

Then a few days after the meeting, I found something that made my stomach drop.

An error. One that undercounted cash burn by $2M+ for the rest of the year.

I still remember that cold sweat moment. Thinking about what to tell the CEO. Thinking about how to save my behind. Both at the same time.

Not my best week.

We fixed it. Client was understanding. But I promised myself I'd never let that happen again.

That mistake rewired my brain.

A basic model has 7,200 cells. You can't check them all manually. You need automated checks that scream at you the moment something breaks.

Check rows that equal zero when everything ties. Anything else? Something's wrong. You see it before your CEO does. Sounds boring. Saves careers.

I got so obsessed with this that I built it directly into Model Wiz. Every template has error checking baked in. Connects to your QuickBooks, pulls your data, and the checks run in the background automatically. Already there, watching your back.

That client I made the $2M error for? Still with me. Six years later. My oldest client.

Probably because I've never made that mistake again. Error checking will do that to you.

What's your system for catching errors before someone else does?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 160

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

This headcount format gets the fastest "got it" from every board I've presented to.

Here's the thing about tables. They work. But nobody remembers them five minutes later.

You say "Sales has 72 people." Board nods. Next slide. Already forgotten.

But when you show them 72 little icons lined up in a row? Totally different. "Wow, that team is big." No one did any math. They just saw it.

That's what I'm talking about.

Departments on the left. Expenses next to them. Then the icons. One little person per employee.

You see the whole company shape in one glance. Where the people are. Where the budget goes. Who's heavy. Who's lean.

Board looks at this and they get it. Instantly. No questions. No "wait, how big is sales again?" We just move on.

And here's the other thing.

Hiring conversations hit different. "We want to add 5 engineers." Okay cool, but show me what that looks like next to the 4 we already have. Now we're talking about doubling the team. Not just a line in a budget. Feels different.

Building this manually though? Painful. All those little icons. Lining them up. Moving them around every time someone joins or leaves. No thanks.

So I built it into Model Wiz.

Model Wiz is a free Excel add-in that allows you to connect your QuickBooks Online, pull your data, and dashboards like this one just show up. No dragging icons around. No spacing nightmares. Just connect and it's yours.

How do you show headcount to your board?

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 70

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Claude just built a full CFO presentation from my Excel file. I didn't touch PowerPoint once.

I've been a fractional CFO for years. Worked with over 100 companies. So when Anthropic announced Claude for PowerPoint, I had to know.

Can it actually create a legitimate CFO summary? Or is this just another AI demo that falls apart with real data?

So I tested it. Let me tell you why you should care.

Here's what I cover in the video:

→ How to set up your prompts before you even start. Garbage in, garbage out. This step saves you hours of back and forth.

→ What happens when you upload a real three-statement model. Not some demo file. Actual financials with projections.

→ The moment Claude did something I didn't even ask for. I wasn't expecting this one.

→ Where it struggled. Because yeah, it wasn't perfect. I'll show you exactly what went wrong and how I fixed it.

→ The final presentation. 10+ slides. Charts, KPIs, commentary. And whether the numbers actually matched my Excel file.

I said out loud at one point, "This would have taken me hours and hours to set up." Man, I was totally blown away.

But here's the question I can't stop thinking about.

What does this mean for my job? For analysts? For anyone who builds financial presentations?

Watch the full video. I'll let you decide.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 40