Testimonials

Alison Grieve, founder of Safetray Products Ltd and inventor of the G-Hold productTestimonial:

It is so important for a hardware company, particularly one that manufactures its products in Scotland, to have financial forecasting tools that not only provide cashflow forecasts but also a P&L forecast to enable us to gain an understanding of profitability across product lines.Understanding our numbers can be the difference between closing an investment deal or going out of business. The Pacioli is a fantastic tool, not only for forecasting but also for helping to understand the elements of accounting that are necessary to grow, through both cashflow management and ensuring each product or service is profitable.

Nick Fannin – Head of Enterprise Napier University

Hi John
It was great to chat with you and to see the financial forecasting software that you are developing. It looks like it could be useful to our students.
Kind regards
Nick

Lorna J Baird
Student Enterprise Manager, Edinburgh University

Dear John– great news you are applying to Scottish Edge to secure funding for the financial forecaster you have been working on. I am more than happy to support with a reference.

Lorna Baird, Student Enterprise Manager, Edinburgh Innovations, University of Edinburgh said:
“We are working closely with Sandy and John on their innovative business forecaster because we recognise the real need for our student entrepreneurs to have access to a product that will transform their financial literacy levels. Subject to a successful trial of the prototype we intend to negotiate a deal on their forecaster and add it to our enterprise toolkit. As far as EI are concerned it can’t come fast enough!”

Best wishes

Lorna

Dr Wendy Wu, Edinburgh Napier

John has identified a daunting challenge facing entrepreneurs and has provided an effective solution! His product makes it easy for entrepreneurs to prepare financial forecasts and by doing so, helps them to make solid, well informed financial decisions. In addition, it also provides a clear formulation to help value companies. This is a much-needed product, and it will be an invaluable tool to entrepreneurs, investors and business advisers.

Dr Wendy Wu, Lecturer of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Business Adviser and Founder of the Edinburgh Napier University Impact Investment Symposium .

Kindest, Wendy

Jaishiv Natarajan – agent India

I am Jaishiv Natarajan, a biologist technocrat, currently enabling entrepreneurship both within and outside India. When I started my pharmaceutical company in the United Kingdom, way back in 2013, being the only founder, I had to take care of the scientific, technological, financial and the marketing part of it. With no prior background/training in finance, it was an arduous task for me to understand the finances (forget creating a cash flow/P&L statement) of my company.

It was very difficult to estimate the cash that is required to keep the company floating, cash required to do the essential activities, cash required to hire the right talent, plan the grants and other future activities. In absence of such a forecaster back then, I did take quite a time to learn and understand the nuances involved in the financials of my company.

Now, coming to the forecaster, the forecaster is well planned and developed taking into account the nuances that are essential in financial planning for companies. Being a technocratic biologist and an illiterate in finance, this forecaster -

1)Allows the me to track a single entry on a clean sheet through the 3 statements to see how it is handled in accounting terms. Also, it is easier for me to program the forecast myself entering loans, assets, cost and sales prices and more in an intuitive way which causes self-learning.

2)Helps me be aware and learn the intrinsic that alter or modify the financial cash flow or profits/loss in my company. Eg. I can easily identify the cost increase of the unit product to accommodate external environmental changes in the market, be it changes in taxes or inflation.

3)Helps me organize my companies’ finances and forecast precisely the funding requirements over 3 or 5 years and optimize my cashflow

4)Create a valid and justifiable valuation for my company – I can do this in an instant of time when I am pitching to the investor instead of waiting for an accountant to do this for me, which usually takes more than a week. I can also instantly modify the micro elements and show the investors live how the company’s finances would be affected by modifying them. Be it the cost of the product, inclusion of grants/future investments, cash flow, profit and loss.

5)Helps me in planning the business activities (creating a new product line, additions to the existing product, create new services) effectively without harming the cash flow.

6)The presentation sheet sets out the gross and net margin trends clearly plus other KPI’s to highlight extreme hockey stick assumptions.

7)The software is easy to understand + the step-by-step guidance by the experts on how to program and modify the forecaster makes it easy even for school students to self-learn them.

I am now much engaged with the Indian start-up community, and I also mentor few start-ups as part of the U.S. Department of State programme. The forecaster, being so simple to learn and use, would be my first choice of recommendation to all the start-ups and the incubators and accelerators that I am engaged with.

Edinburgh Uni Summer Accelerator student feedback

Question 1 Too what extent has the forecaster I demonstrated answered your questions about how you can forecast your own business? -

Answer The demonstration opened my eyes into the complexities of forecasting, but very helpful to see how the inputs translated into final business calculations and metrics

Question 2 How do you believe the forecaster will improve and enhance your skills in presenting and articulating your figures for your business to investors, lenders, and competition managers? -

Answer Through use of the tool, I predict I would become more comfortable with understanding how financial inputs impact overall results which will build confidence in communicating to different entities

Question 3) Can you describe your thoughts on the importance of an entrepreneur acquiring the skills to provide understanding of your own business finances and the elevation of this skill to the level of your other skills in your entrepreneurial journey? -

Answer Anything that an entrepreneur outsources risk loss into visibility of that part of their business. Much better to be an informed entrepreneur who can ask insightful questions of the finance, strategy and business experts, then integrate them into their own business plans and projections. I hope the response helps and thank you again for your sessions.

Best wishes,Caroline Caroline Kotz Summer Accelerator InternStudent Enterprise Services Edinburgh Innovations The University of Edinburgh

John Hughes

Eden House

Gavinton, Duns

BerwickshireTD11 3QS

7th August 2021

Dear John,

Financial Forecaster

Thank you for demonstrating the latest version of your financial forecaster to me recently. When I consider my own experience in start-ups and small entities, I have no doubt of the centrality of this kind of analysis at the earliest stages in entrepreneurship. It is surprisingly difficult for a business founder to produce detailed forecasts like this – but perhaps less surprising when one considers that their expertise probably lies in their core business idea rather than accountancy. The enormous workload associated with innovation will also prevent them from acquiring these skills at the crucial stage.

The forecaster gathers clear inputs and simultaneously produces the “holy trinity” of financial forecasting: cash-flow, profit and loss, and balance sheet. Sometimes early-stage entrepreneurs focus on cash flow alone,without realising that investment for high growth – or in fact success of any sort – depends upon the full suite.

You have also used the breadth of coverage in the tool to embed checks and warnings into the sheets. This neatly deals with the famous “garbage in, garbage out” problem – you detect any garbage which the user might accidentally bring in.

I have often found it useful to verify calculations by making one isolated change, and tracking that through the whole analysis. Your method makes that quite easy to do. For first-time entrepreneurs, who are intelligent but often lacking in financial literacy, such simple methods present an excellent opportunity for them to teach themselves what is actually going on. For example, one can easily see the distinction between cost of sales,overheads and capital expenditure by exploring the different ways in which these numbers flow through the different analysis outputs. An afternoon’s experimentation is likely to better equip an entrepreneur for their first pitch than most traditional learning methods.

I look forward to seeing this forecaster “on the streets”, and to meeting the next generation of innovators and disruptors who use it.

Kind regards,

Alastair Martin

Chief Strategy Officer