AI Prompts for Financial Planning

**Role:** You are a CFO-for-hire who builds cash flow projections for growing businesses. You know that cash flow kills more companies than lack of profitability — and that the assumptions behind the model matter more than the numbers.

**My business:**
- Business type: [Industry and model (SaaS, services, e-commerce, etc.)]
- Monthly revenue: [Current average and trend]
- Revenue mix: [Recurring vs. one-time, by product/service]
- Payment terms: [When customers pay — upfront, net-30, net-60]
- Fixed costs: [List with monthly amounts]
- Variable costs: [List with percentage of revenue]
- Upcoming expenses: [Large one-time costs in the next 12 months]
- Cash on hand: [Current balance]
- Seasonality: [Which months are typically stronger or weaker]

**Instructions:**
1. **Month-by-month cash flow table** — Inflows, outflows, and running balance for 12 months.
2. **Three scenarios** — Optimistic (things go right), Realistic (current trajectory), Pessimistic (things go wrong). Show the cash position for each.
3. **Cash crunch alert** — Identify the month(s) where cash balance dips dangerously low in each scenario.
4. **Key assumptions** — List every assumption explicitly so I can validate and adjust.
5. **Cash reserve target** — How much cash runway should I maintain, and what's the minimum safe balance?
6. **Improvement actions** — 5 specific things to improve cash flow this quarter (accelerate receivables, renegotiate terms, cut costs).
7. **Sensitivity analysis** — Which single assumption, if wrong by 20%, has the biggest impact on cash position?

**Role:** You are a pricing strategist who has optimized pricing for 30+ SaaS, services, and e-commerce businesses. You know that pricing is the highest-leverage growth lever most companies ignore — a 1% price increase flows straight to the bottom line.

**My business:**
- Product/service: [What you sell]
- Current pricing: [Amount, model (monthly/annual/per-project), and any tiers]
- Cost to deliver: [Per unit or per customer cost]
- Competitor pricing: [List 3-5 competitors with their prices and tiers]
- Target customer: [Who buys this and their budget sensitivity]
- Value delivered: [What the customer gains in measurable terms — revenue, time saved, cost reduced]
- Pricing goal: [Maximize revenue / Market share / Premium positioning / Simplify]
- What's not working with current pricing: [Objections, lost deals, underpricing signals]

**Instructions:**
1. **Pricing model analysis** — 3 pricing models to consider (per-seat, usage-based, flat-rate, tiered, value-based) with pros/cons for my specific business.
2. **Price recommendation** — A specific price point with reasoning anchored in value delivered, not cost-plus.
3. **3-tier structure** — Starter, Professional, and Enterprise tiers with feature differentiation. Design the 'nudge' tier to be the obvious choice.
4. **Pricing psychology** — Specific tactics to apply: anchoring, decoy effect, annual discount framing, feature gating.
5. **Competitive positioning** — Where to price relative to competitors and how to justify the gap (higher or lower).
6. **Migration plan** — How to raise prices for existing customers without churning them (communication scripts and grandfathering options).
7. **Testing framework** — How to A/B test pricing without confusing the market.

**Role:** You are a financial analyst who evaluates business viability through unit economics. You know that a business with bad unit economics can grow itself to death — every new customer actually loses money.

**My business metrics:**
- Product/service: [What you sell]
- Average sale price: [Amount per customer per month/year]
- Customer acquisition costs:
  - Marketing spend: [Monthly amount]
  - Sales team cost: [Salaries + commissions allocated to acquisition]
  - Other acquisition costs: [Free trials, onboarding, etc.]
- Cost to deliver: [Fulfillment, COGS, support costs per customer]
- Monthly active customers: [Current count]
- Customer retention: [Average lifetime in months, or monthly churn rate]
- Upsell/cross-sell rate: [Percentage who buy more and average increase]
- Referral rate: [Percentage of customers who refer others]

**Instructions:**
1. **LTV calculation** — Customer Lifetime Value with formula shown and assumptions stated.
2. **CAC breakdown** — Fully-loaded Customer Acquisition Cost by channel.
3. **LTV:CAC ratio** — Current ratio and what it means (target: 3:1+). If below 3:1, which lever to pull.
4. **Contribution margin** — Per-customer margin after all variable costs.
5. **Payback period** — Months to recoup acquisition cost. Cash flow implications.
6. **Cohort analysis framework** — How to track whether unit economics are improving or deteriorating over time.
7. **Improvement levers** — Rank the top 5 levers to improve unit economics by expected impact: reduce CAC, increase price, reduce churn, increase expansion revenue, reduce COGS.

**Role:** You are a financial modeling expert who builds models for fundraising, board presentations, and strategic planning. You know that a good model isn't about precision — it's about exposing the assumptions that drive the business.

**My business:**
- Description and stage: [What you do and current traction]
- Revenue model: [How you make money — subscriptions, transactions, services, etc.]
- Current metrics: [MRR/ARR, growth rate, churn, gross margin, customers]
- Projection period: [3 years / 5 years]
- Key growth assumptions: [Expected growth rate, new channels, market expansion]
- Hiring plan: [Key hires planned and when]
- Funding: [Amount raising, current runway, or bootstrapped]

**Instructions:**
1. **P&L projection** — Revenue, COGS, gross margin, operating expenses (by category), EBITDA — monthly for Year 1, quarterly for Years 2-3.
2. **Revenue model** — Bottom-up build: leads × conversion × ACV × retention. Show the math, not just the output.
3. **Key driver assumptions** — A table listing every assumption with high/mid/low values.
4. **Headcount plan** — Mapped to revenue milestones, not calendar dates. Fully-loaded cost per role.
5. **Sensitivity analysis** — Which 3 assumptions have the biggest impact? Show what happens if each is 25% worse.
6. **Break-even analysis** — When do you reach profitability in each scenario? What's the cash requirement to get there?
7. **Investor questions** — The 5 toughest questions an investor will ask about these numbers, with prepared answers.

**Role:** You are a fractional CFO who helps growing companies optimize spending. You know the difference between cutting fat (good) and cutting muscle (catastrophic). Your goal is to reallocate spending from low-ROI to high-ROI activities.

**My expenses:**
Monthly expenses by category:
[List each category with amount: payroll, software, rent, marketing, professional services, etc.]

- Revenue: [Monthly revenue]
- Team size: [Number of employees]
- Growth stage: [Pre-revenue / Growing / Profitable]
- Expenses I think are too high: [What concerns you]
- Expenses I can't cut: [Non-negotiable costs and why]

**Instructions:**
1. **Benchmark comparison** — How my spending in each category compares to similar businesses at my stage. Flag outliers.
2. **ROI categorization** — Label each expense: Growth Investment (drives revenue), Infrastructure (keeps operations running), Overhead (pure cost).
3. **Top 5 reduction opportunities** — With estimated monthly savings and risk of cutting each.
4. **Vendor renegotiation playbook** — For the 3 highest expenses: specific negotiation scripts, competing alternatives to reference, and best timing to renegotiate.
5. **Software audit** — Subscriptions to consolidate, downgrade, or cancel. Flag overlapping tools.
6. **Reallocation recommendations** — Where to redirect savings for maximum growth impact.
7. **Monthly expense review checklist** — A 15-minute monthly routine to prevent cost creep.

**Role:** You are a CFO who builds operating budgets that serve as strategic tools, not just accounting exercises. You know a good budget aligns every dollar with a company priority and makes trade-off decisions explicit.

**My business:**
- Type and stage: [Startup / Growing / Established]
- Annual revenue target: [Amount and basis for the target]
- Current team: [Size and planned hires]
- Major initiatives this year: [3-5 strategic priorities]
- Last year's actual spending: [Categories and amounts if available]
- Funding situation: [Bootstrapped / Funded / Profitable]
- Budget philosophy: [Growth at all costs / Efficient growth / Profitability focused]

**Instructions:**
1. **Budget template** — All major categories with monthly allocations:
   - People (by department)
   - Software & tools
   - Marketing & growth
   - Infrastructure & operations
   - Professional services
   - General & administrative
2. **Revenue projections** — Broken down by source or product line with assumptions.
3. **Headcount plan** — Fully-loaded cost per role, mapped to when each hire is needed based on revenue milestones.
4. **Priority alignment** — Map each budget line to a strategic initiative. Flag spending that doesn't connect to a priority.
5. **Must-have vs. nice-to-have** — Split discretionary spending into essential and deferrable.
6. **Variance thresholds** — At what percentage over-budget should each category trigger a review?
7. **Quarterly review process** — Specific questions to ask and decisions to make at each quarterly budget review.

**Role:** You are a bookkeeping assistant who extracts structured financial data from invoices, receipts, and statements. You are precise with numbers and flag anything that looks inconsistent.

**Invoice/receipt data:**
[Paste the text from one or more invoices, receipts, or financial documents. Include as much detail as available.]

**My business context:**
- Business name: [Your company name]
- Accounting method: [Cash / Accrual]
- Expense categories I use: [List your chart of accounts categories]
- Currency: [Primary currency]

**Instructions:**
1. **Structured extraction** — For each document, extract into a table:
   - Vendor name
   - Invoice/receipt number
   - Date
   - Line items (description, quantity, unit price, total)
   - Subtotal, tax, total
   - Payment terms or due date
   - Payment method (if visible)
2. **Category assignment** — Map each line item to the appropriate expense category from my chart of accounts.
3. **Consistency checks** — Flag any math errors, missing information, or unusual charges.
4. **Tax extraction** — Separate tax amounts for tax reporting.
5. **Duplicate detection** — If multiple documents are provided, flag any that might be duplicates.
6. **Summary** — Total spending across all documents, broken down by category and vendor.
7. **Journal entry format** — Output in a format ready to import into accounting software (date, account, debit, credit).