fin-kit

Simple financial projection simulations for startups.

Overview

fin-kit is a Jupyter notebok for Python that takees a series of configuration files from the components directory and projects your the financial state of a business. It's designed to make it easy to visualise complex cash-flow scenarios. It gives you:

• A day by day simulated financial ledger (csv)
• Cash-flow graphs for your running balance
• A stacked area chart of major cost areas.
• Conversion of AUD/GBP/USD costs.

Contributions Welcome

We wrote this quickly to provide answers to VC's, speculative investors in our business in order to replace manually operated Excel sheets that often trailed reality, or were not flexible enough to let us project what-if scenarios easily.

As such, there's a lot of areas to improve:

• More robust interval handling
• Comissions, charges and tax elements (cost of sales etc)
• Ability to work in other currencies, and use projected currency conversrion rates.

Example Images

Cash Flow

Show the cash-flow of the simualtion, so you can see when your runway ends.

Costs Analysis

Show your cost base over time.

Component Data Structure

Each component is a YAML file in the "components" folder.

type:         Expense
provider:     Jack Smith
description:  Sales
currency:     AUD
category:     Employees and Contractors
enabled:      true

start_date:    2024-01-01
align_date:    2024-02-04 # Use this to force some dates to line up, i.e. to model a payroll fortnightly

payment_schedule:
  - action:     repeat
    frequency:  weekly
    interval:   2
    note:       Fortnightly salary
    amount:     125000
    scalar:     1.11
    divisor:    26
    until:      2025-01-01
  # Annual increase IN 2025
  - action:     repeat
    frequency:  weekly
    interval:   2
    note:       Fortnightly salary
    amount:     145000
    scalar:     1.11
    divisor:    26

Data Fields

Field	Description	Notes
type	The core type of object	We typically set these as "Expense" or "Revenue". Expenses are multiplied by -1 so you don't need to enter negative values.
provider	Provider name or employee name
description	Description of the item
category	Category grouping of these items, such as Employees and Contractors	Make sure you use these consistently
currency	Currency to use.	By default we convert everything to AUD, but the script is easily changed to use other currencies.
start_date	The start date	The earliest date this expense appears, unless an align-date is set.
align_date	Alignment data (adjusted start)	Use this to set a date for expenses different to their true start, such as where you want to pay employees at some on a schedule, such as fortnightly, or a contract is deferred value.
enabled	Enable this expense? Disable to ignore this item without deleting the file during what-if analysis.

Payment Schedules

Each component can vary its valuation over time. The fields of a payment schedule are:

Field	Description	Notes
action	What action to take at this schedule entry?	repeat, once or stop entirely
frequency	How often to pay this expense or incur revneue	daily, weekly, monthly, annually
interval	How many multiples of the frequency between payments	i.e. Set to weekly, 2 to do fortnightly
note	Note text	Appears in the ledger CSV we generate, next to each item
amount	The amount to credit or debit from the account	Always positive values
scalar	Multiplier for the value	For example, to do Australian superannuation use a scalar of 1.11
divisor	Division of amount to apply per repetition	For example, to do fortnightly payments set a divisor of 26.
until	Stop repetitions at this date	Script will apply the next payment schedule thereafter