Most small business owners run their finances by looking at the bank balance and hoping. They know their revenue. They rarely know their gross margin, and almost none of them know their break even point.
Large companies pay analysts to build models that answer those questions. Small businesses can't, so they don't ask.
The idea is a Google Sheet that does the financial modeling for them: enter a few numbers, get the answers a CFO would give. It's one of my 100 business ideas in Google Sheets, and it's one of the best fits for anyone with a finance background.
The idea
This is a great business for someone with experience as an accountant, a financial analyst, or even in business management. You already know what the models look like. The opportunity is bringing the models that large businesses use to discover big opportunities and healthy profits down to the people running a bakery, a landscaping crew, or a two-person agency.
An income statement and a balance sheet are table stakes. Include them, but don't expect anyone to pay for them alone. Templates for those are everywhere.
What people will pay for is having the math done for them. Write specific custom Apps Script functions to do the calculations instead of embedding formulas in every cell. A custom function like =BREAKEVEN(fixedCosts, pricePerUnit, variableCostPerUnit) is something a business owner can type, understand, and trust. A nest of formulas across six cells is something they'll break by accident and never fix.
To someone who doesn't know finance, a sheet like this acts like magic. They enter their costs and prices, and the sheet tells them how many units they need to sell this month to stop losing money. Figures like gross margin and break even point are the indicators a small business needs when deciding whether to invest in growth, and most have never seen theirs.
The sheet doesn't have to be a complete financial modeling service. It doesn't have to have everything. It could do awesome in one specific area: pricing, hiring, cash runway, whether to buy or lease equipment. Pick the one question you get asked most often and build the best answer to it.
And this is a great way to gain trust as an expert in the field. A sheet that gives someone a clear answer about their own business is a better business card than any credential. The consulting work that follows is often worth more than the sheet.
How to build it in Google Sheets
- Inputs. The only tab the owner touches. Fixed monthly costs, variable cost per unit, price per unit, current monthly units, cash on hand, expected growth rate. Keep it under 20 cells.
- Income Statement. Built entirely from Inputs. Revenue, cost of goods sold, gross profit, operating expenses, net income. Monthly columns for twelve months.
- Balance Sheet. Assets, liabilities, equity. Simple, but present.
- Key Figures. The magic tab. Gross margin, break even units, break even revenue, months of runway, contribution margin. Each one a single cell with a plain English label and a one-sentence explanation next to it.
- Scenarios. Three columns (Conservative, Expected, Aggressive) where the owner can change growth rate and price and watch the Key Figures move.
- Custom functions in Apps Script for break even, margin, and runway. This is the differentiator. It hides complexity and makes the sheet feel like a tool rather than a template.
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Named ranges for every input, so your formulas read as
=Revenue-COGSinstead of a string of cell references. Easier for you to maintain, easier for a curious owner to follow. - SPARKLINE next to each monthly line on the Income Statement, so trends show up without building a chart.
- Conditional formatting on Key Figures: red when net income is negative, green when the business is past break even. Owners read color faster than numbers.
- Protected ranges on every tab except Inputs and Scenarios. Nobody should be able to type over your formulas.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
The buyer is a small business owner who has outgrown gut feel, or a bookkeeper or consultant who serves those owners and wants a tool to hand them. Owners pay for the answer. Consultants pay for the leverage.
Price a single-purpose model as a one-time template. Price a fuller model with scenarios higher, still one-time. The subscription version is a service: a monthly call where you walk through their numbers in the sheet. That's where the finance background pays off, and the sheet is what gets you in the door.
Gumroad is fine for the one-time sale. If you want buyers to always have your latest version, with new functions and fixes, sell through OnlySheets, which shares the Google Sheet automatically when someone buys and keeps everyone on the master copy.
First 10 customers: offer to run the numbers for ten business owners you already know, for free, using the sheet. Send each one a screenshot of their Key Figures tab with a two-line note about what it means. Half will ask to keep the sheet. Some will ask what else you can tell them.
Related ideas from the list
- Budget Planning Model, the same buyer, one step earlier in their financial thinking.
- Business Decision Calculator, which packages a single business question into a sheet the same way.
- VC Investor Model, the same modeling mechanic pointed at investors instead of owners.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.
