A ratio-based budget for projects with no trading history
Most budgeting tools start from last year's numbers. New projects don't have that luxury. This tool builds a full standard (master) budget from first principles — your unit economics and your asset base — using cost-volume-profit ratios instead of historical statements. In seconds it produces a five-line budget statement: sales, purchases, gross profit, expenses, and net profit.
Why this tool exists
Before a new product or venture launches, someone has to answer: what should our first budget look like? This tool gives founders, accountants, and analysts a defensible, ratio-based starting point in place of guesswork — a first-pass standard budget that can anchor a feasibility study, a pitch deck, or an internal target-setting conversation, without needing a single month of trading data.
Built for
Entrepreneurs launching a new product line, accountants drafting feasibility studies, small-business owners setting first-year targets, and finance students studying standard costing and CVP analysis.
Not built for
Replacing a full financial model, multi-product or multi-period forecasting, or any budget that will be submitted to investors or lenders without review by a qualified accountant.
How the calculation works
The engine works backward from a target net profit to a full budget, using your inputs to locate you on an efficiency scale first.
Capture your unit economics
Your selling price and cost per unit set the baseline gross-margin ratio the whole model is built on.
Set your asset base
The share of total fixed and current assets attributable to this product anchors the target return the budget is solved for.
Choose your ambition
Good, Very Good, or High Very Good efficiency degrees scale the multiplier used to size the resulting budget — a more ambitious tier produces a larger, more demanding budget.
Locate your position on the ratio scale
The calculator plots your price-to-cost ratio on a bracket scale (shown below) — this "efficiency ratio" determines which multiplier the model applies.
Solve the budget, line by line
The tool solves backward from the target net profit, through gross profit and expenses, to sales and purchases — producing the complete five-line budget statement.
The gold marker shows where the worked example below (ratio 1.75) falls on the scale. Run your own numbers below to see where you land.
Run the calculator
Four inputs, all required. The calculator validates them before running and produces your evaluation report below.
What you'll get
Submit the form to generate a five-line standard budget — sales, purchases, gross profit, expenses, and net profit — plus a button to download that exact report as a PDF.
What you need before you start
Four inputs, all required — the calculator validates them before running.
| Field | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Selling price per unit | The price at which you plan to sell one unit of the product. | 100.00 |
| Cost per unit | The full cost of producing or acquiring one unit. Must be lower than the selling price. | 60.00 |
| Share of total assets | The portion of your fixed and current assets attributable to this product. Must exceed both the price and the cost per unit. | 1,000.00 |
| Target efficiency degree | Good (safety starting point), Very Good, or High Very Good — sets how ambitious the resulting budget is. | High Very Good |
All fields are required. If cost is not lower than price, or the asset share does not exceed both price and cost, the calculator stops and asks you to correct the figures — this keeps the ratios that follow mathematically valid.
What the output tells you
The calculator returns one thing: a five-line standard budget. Each line is derived from the one above it.
Sales value
Projected revenue for the period, sized by your chosen efficiency degree and where your price-to-cost ratio falls on the scale.
Purchases value
The cost of goods you'll need to buy or produce to generate that sales figure.
Gross profit
Sales minus purchases — your trading margin before operating costs.
Expenses
Operating costs implied by the gap between gross and net profit at your target efficiency level.
Net profit
The bottom line — derived directly from your asset share and is, in effect, the target the rest of the budget is built to hit.
From three inputs to a full budget
Inputs
- Selling price per unit
- 100.00
- Cost per unit
- 60.00
- Share of total assets
- 1,000.00
- Target efficiency degree
- High Very Good
| Sales value | 1,750.00 |
| Less: Purchases value | (1,050.00) |
| Gross profit | 700.00 |
| Less: Expenses | (450.00) |
| Net profit | 250.00 |
Read this as: with a $100 price, a $60 cost, and $1,000 of assets behind the product, aiming for the top efficiency tier implies a budget of roughly $1,750 in sales, built on $1,050 of purchases, leaving $700 of gross profit — of which $450 covers operating expenses, leaving a $250 net profit target. Try your own numbers ↑
Where this fits into real work
- Sizing a first-year operating budget for a startup or a new product line before any sales data exists.
- Backing up the numbers section of a feasibility study or an early-stage business plan.
- Stress-testing a pricing strategy by comparing the budgets produced at each efficiency tier.
- Teaching standard costing and cost-volume-profit analysis in an accounting or finance course.
- Running a quick sanity check on a budget before it's built out in full accounting software.
What it's good at, and where it stops
Advantages
- Free and instant — a complete budget in under a minute.
- Needs no trading history, ideal for brand-new projects.
- Ratio-based, so it's objective rather than a guess.
- Scales automatically across three ambition levels.
- Produces a clean five-line statement anyone can read at a glance.
Limitations
- Models a single product and a single period — no seasonality or multi-year view.
- Excludes taxes, financing costs, and depreciation.
- Efficiency-bracket multipliers are heuristic, not fitted to any one industry.
- Assumes your price-cost-asset ratios stay stable across the period.
- Should be reviewed by a qualified accountant before use in investor or lender documents.