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Financial modeling allows organizations to forecast performance by combining historical data with future projections.
FP&A professionals use these models to test different “what-if” scenarios—like how rising material costs could affect profit margins. This helps identify risks and opportunities early, enabling teams to plan for uncertainty with greater confidence.
These models also support sensitivity analysis, capital budgeting, and business valuation, especially in scenarios involving mergers or acquisitions.
Whether you’re looking to think more strategically, understand your organization holistically, or improve your decision-making, understanding the different types of financial models is essential.
Below, we cover 10 of the most common types of financial models. You’ll find this list useful if you’re an FP&A professional looking to gain a holistic understanding of the business, think more strategically or improve decision making processes.
Financial models help you:
Forecast revenue, expenses, and cash flow
Simulate different market conditions and business decisions
Identify areas for improvement and adjust strategies proactively
That said, building accurate models isn’t always easy. It often involves consolidating data from multiple sources—like financial statements and software platforms—which can increase the risk of errors. Standardized templates and purpose-built modeling tools can simplify the process and improve accuracy.
We’ve grouped the 10 financial model types into two main categories: internal and external models.
Internal financial models are used for internal planning, budgeting and forecasting. Some examples include:
External financial models demonstrate a company's valuation, financial health or regulatory compliance to external stakeholders. Some examples include:
We'll cover all these models in detail below.
A three-statement model links your company's main financial statements through a series of formulas in Excel:
Financial analysts use the three-statement model to see how different business activities, such as revenue growth and expenses, affect performance.
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Source: Wall Street Prep
The three-statement model links the income statement to the balance sheet and the balance sheet to the cash flow statement.
Source: A Simple Model
If the net income from the income statement shows a profit, it adds to the total equity on the balance sheet. If it shows a loss, the equity decreases. Revenue increases assets such as cash, while expenses increase liabilities or decrease cash.
Changes in the income statement affect certain assets and liabilities on the balance sheet, such as accounts receivable and accounts payable. They also affect the cash flow statement.
For example, if you borrow money (a liability), it adds cash to the financing activities section of the cash flow statement. If you invest in new equipment (an asset), it decreases cash in the investing activities section.
The final cash balance from the cash flow statement is used in the balance sheet to update the company's cash position.
These interconnections let you track the ripple effects of changes across all three statements, which is useful for forecasting, scenario analysis, cash flow analysis, capital budgeting etc.
Pro Tip: Use financial modeling software to speed up scenario planning and make better decisions. Vena integrates natively with Excel, giving you a familiar interface to work with. It’s bolstered by a centralized database to unify all your source systems, letting you create three-statement financial models to run daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.
The sum of the parts model helps you understand the total value of a business that has multiple divisions or operates in different industries, like Amazon or General Electric for example.
The SOTP model breaks down the company into its individual components, valuing each one separately and then adding them up to get the total value.
Valuing each part individually gives a clearer picture of the business's overall value and identifies potential areas of strength or weakness.
This financial modeling and valuation technique is also useful for:
Source: Wall Street Prep
Say you run a conglomerate called ABC Corporation, which has three major divisions: technology, retail and manufacturing.
First, list the major parts of ABC Corporation that you want to value. In this case, it's the Manufacturing, Retail and Technology divisions. Then, choose the most suitable valuation method for each division and calculate its value separately.
Based on the valuation method used, let’s say the Manufacturing Division is valued at $300 million, and Retail and Technology are valued at $200 million and $150 million, respectively.
Add the individual values to get ABC Corporation's total estimated value ($300 million + $200 million + $150 million = $650 million).
Then, adjust for debt and other liabilities. If ABC Corporation has $100 million in debt, you'd subtract that from the total to get the net value: $650 million - $100 million = $550 million.
Finally, check if there are any potential synergies (additional value from combining operations) or corporate overheads (centralized costs). If there are significant synergies, you might add their estimated value. If there are overheads, subtract them.
The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model estimates the intrinsic value of a business, asset or investment by discounting its expected future cash flows to the present value.
This approach is based on the principle that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future, due to factors like inflation, risk and the opportunity cost of capital.
The DCF model is popular for valuing companies, projects, or assets. It helps investors and analysts assess investment opportunities. This includes:
Source: Breaking Into Wall Street
The DCF model estimates the worth of an investment, business or project using these steps:
Consider how much money the business will earn over the next 5-10 years. This includes revenue, expenses, taxes and other factors that affect cash flow.
After you've forecasted those initial years, estimate how much the business could be worth when it stops growing or at some point in the future (the terminal value) using:
The discount rate is a percentage that reflects the cost of capital and the risk of the business. It's used to convert future cash flows into today's dollars. Calculate this rate using the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), which considers both equity and debt.
Once you have the discount rate, apply it to each year's cash flow and the terminal value to bring them to their present value. This is done by dividing the future cash flow by (1 + discount rate) ^ n, where n is the number of years in the future.
Add up all the present values of the forecasted cash flows and the terminal value. This total is the estimated value of the business or investment in today's terms.
The DCF model has some flexibility, but it's sensitive to changes in assumptions.
For example, if you adjust the discount rate or change the expected cash flow, it can significantly affect the final valuation. Sensitivity analysis helps test different scenarios to see how these changes impact the results.
Pro Tip: DCF relies on accurate forecasting, and even small changes in assumptions can lead to big differences in value. To create an accurate DCF model, you need reliable cash flow forecasts and a carefully chosen discount rate. Using cash flow planning software can help with this.
The Consolidation Model combines a parent company's financial statements with those of its subsidiaries into a single set of statements.
These consolidated financial statements give a 360-degree view of the financial health and performance of the parent company and its subsidiaries as if they were a single entity.
Publicly traded companies, conglomerates or companies with significant ownership stakes in other entities use this method to:
Source: Corporate Finance Institute
This model works by:
There are also other parts of the process, like eliminating intercompany transactions and consolidating balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, etc.
But manually performing these consolidations is tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone. You spend too much time gathering data from different sources and statement version control can be unruly.
Automating the process with financial consolidation software is a more reliable way to gather and analyze accurate data quickly in real time.
You can leverage Vena’s pre-built logic for the most challenging calculations during the financial consolidations process, including accurately accounting for and reporting non-controlling interests and cumulative translation adjustments.
A budget model helps FP&A analysts estimate the company’s revenues and expenses, allocate resources, and set realistic financial goals. It outlines how resources will be allocated over a certain period to meet financial goals and operational requirements.
This financial modeling tool is used for:
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An example of a dashboard created in Vena to summarize revenue and cost of goods sold (COGS).
The budgeting model varies depending on the context, but the core principles remain consistent: planning, tracking, adjusting and evaluating spend. It includes key components like:
The budgeting process requires you to identify all sources of income, categorize expenses, establish your budget structure and track your spending.
To avoid any errors and speed up the process, use this free operating expense budget for Excel. The template lets you create a budget that aligns with your financial goals and consistently track spending across your accounts to ensure you're sticking to it.
A forecasting model predicts future trends, outcomes or events based on historical data, trends, and assumptions. It helps financial planning and analysis professionals compare future projections with present budget estimations.
This way, they can:
An example of a rolling forecast for operating expenses created with Vena.
Before creating a forecast, identify what you're trying to predict and why it's important.
The purpose could be to project sales for the next quarter, estimate future cash flows, forecast inventory needs or predict economic trends.
Then, gather historical data—forecasting relies on historical data to identify trends and patterns. You’ll need to collect relevant data like:
Complete planning software like Vena brings together both your financial and operational data from your ERP, CRM, HRIS, Excel and other systems. It also includes pre-built but customizable templates for planning revenues, operating expenses and more.
ATB Financial, for example, used Vena to build a custom forecasting model that let them:
An option pricing model is a mathematical framework used to determine the fair value or theoretical price of options. Corporate finance teams often use this model to:
There are three main types of option pricing models:
To use this model, determine the underlying asset price, strike price, time to expiry, volatility, risk-free rate and type of option (call or put).
Then, choose the appropriate option pricing model based on the type of option and other characteristics. F
or example, the Black-Scholes model is suitable for European-style options, while the binomial model is commonly used for American-style options.
The Leveraged Buyout (LBO) model is an Excel-based tool for evaluating the viability and profitability of acquiring a company using a significant amount of borrowed money.
The model helps monitor the acquired company's performance, ensuring that it generates sufficient cash flows to service the debt and deliver the expected returns.
FP&A professionals can use the LBO model to run various scenarios, such as changes in interest rates, operating performance or market conditions to understand how these factors might impact the buyout's success.
This way, you can:
Source: Corporate Finance Institute
An LBO model typically follows these steps:
Creating a reliable LBO model improves your ability to assess risk, predict future ROI, plan for multiple potential outcomes and successfully navigate uncertainty.
But to identify the right opportunities for a potential acquisition, you need a budgeting and planning process that helps you easily make smarter business decisions faster.
For example, First Majestic Silver Corp., one of North America’s leading miners of silver, is always looking for acquisition opportunities and constantly adding new sites to its portfolio.
Before Vena, their finance team struggled to build a coherent budget, as everything was done using offline Excel spreadsheets. As a result, the team couldn’t empower leadership with a reliable long-term business outlook, making it difficult to plan confidently for future capital investments and growth opportunities.
But with an Excel-based financial planning software like Vena, the team now presents management with the most reliable business plan possible, with budgets done 50% faster.
A Merger Model analyzes and evaluates the potential impact of a merger or acquisition.
Also called an M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) model, it helps stakeholders understand the financial and strategic effects of combining two companies, including cost synergies, revenue synergies, financing needs and the impact on shareholders.
Source: Street of Walls
This financial modeling tool is used to determine the potential benefits and risks of combining two companies. To do this, it analyzes the effects on earnings per share (EPS), debt levels, cash flows and other critical metrics.
Generally, a merger model follows these steps:
An Initial Public Offering (IPO) model estimates the value of a company preparing to go public and helps stakeholders understand the potential outcomes of this move.
Financial analysts use the IPO model to conduct valuation analyses. They compare the company to its industry peers and provide recommendations regarding the IPO investment opportunity.
The insights from the analysis help the company:
Source: Macabus
An IPO model typically follows these steps:
The most critical part of an IPO is ensuring all regulatory requirements are met. This includes filing accurate documents with securities authorities and adhering to listing rules.
To streamline the IPO process, consider transitioning from manual copy-and-paste spreadsheet methods to using complete planning software. This software automates financial reporting, ensuring accurate reports and timely completion of regulatory filings.
Shift4 Payments made the switch two years before their IPO.
The team automated the flow of data from Shift4’s Oracle ERP Suite (and other systems) into a central database, providing a unified platform for their budgeting and forecasting, reporting and scenario modeling activities. As a result, they produced accurate reports with insights cross-functional stakeholders could rely on.
The reporting structure Shift4 developed in Vena made the IPO process smoother. For example, they could input topside adjustments via the Excel-based templates and generate historical results under PCAOB audit standards.
Excel is still arguably the best financial modeling tool out there—its flexibility is unmatched.
With Vena’s Complete Planning platform natively integrated with Microsoft 365, you get to keep the best of Excel while scaling its capabilities.
Vena’s centralized database automates the process of gathering data from the various systems you already use, saving you time and improving data accuracy. With Vena, you can also create multiple scenarios and perform sensitivity analysis, providing insights into how different factors affect financial outcomes.
Our software includes a Power BI integration, ad-hoc reporting tools and executive-level reporting templates to help you create detailed real-time reports and facilitate clear communication with stakeholders and decision makers.
Use Vena to build models that accurately reflect your business's goals and unlock powerful insights to make smarter choices for the future.
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