Three documents, one story: make your numbers agree

Here is a rule of thumb we use with every company preparing to raise: three documents, one story. Your pitch deck, your financial model and your accounts should make the numbers agree, every time. When they do not, investors notice quickly, and the conversation moves from your opportunity to your reliability.

The three documents

Almost every raise rests on the same three:

• The pitch deck. The headline numbers: revenue, growth, margin, the amount you are raising and what it pays for.
• The financial model. The detail behind those headlines: assumptions, monthly forecasts, cash flow.
• The accounts. Filed statutory accounts and your latest management accounts. This is the history, and it is the one document you cannot rewrite.

An investor usually meets them in that order. The deck gets them interested. The model is where they test the story. The accounts are where they check that the starting point is real.

Why the numbers drift apart

Mismatches are rarely dishonest. They creep in because the documents are built at different times, often by different people.

• The deck was written in spring and the model has been updated three times since.
• The deck shows revenue as contracts signed; the accounts show it as revenue recognised.
• “Last year” means the calendar year in the deck and your financial year in the accounts.
• Someone rounded up for the slide, then rounded up again for the summary.
• One-off income sits in the deck’s headline but is shown separately in the accounts.

Each one is small. Together they make an investor wonder what else has drifted.

The one-number test

Pick the five numbers that matter most in your deck. For most companies these are last year’s revenue, current monthly revenue, gross margin, cash in the bank and the amount being raised. For each one, ask:

1. Where exactly does this number come from in the model? Can you point to the cell?
2. Does the model’s starting figure match the filed or management accounts?
3. Is the definition the same in all three places: same period, same basis, same treatment of one-offs?
4. If the number has been rounded, is it rounded the same way everywhere?

If you cannot answer all four for all five numbers, you have found your work for the week.

An investor will forgive a forecast that turns out wrong. They are much less forgiving of a history that does not match.

How to keep them aligned

Treat the model as the single source. Every number in the deck should be copied from it, not typed from memory. A small reconciliation tab helps: each deck figure, its cell reference in the model and the matching line in the accounts. It takes an afternoon to build and saves awkward emails later.

Date your documents. A deck that says “figures as at 30 September” sets an honest expectation and tells the investor which version of the model to open.

Freeze before you send. Once the round is live, agree one version of the deck and model, put both in the data room, and change them only with a short note explaining what moved and why. Our guide to setting up a data room covers version control in more detail.

Use fresh eyes. Ask someone who did not build the deck to check it against the model. They will catch the rounding and period errors the author reads straight past.

What it signals

Consistent numbers do more than avoid embarrassment. They tell an investor that the finance function is in control, that reporting after the raise will be reliable, and that the founder respects their time. That is a large part of what they are backing. For more on what the deck itself needs to do, see the pitch deck investors read.

Before your next investor meeting, run the one-number test on your top five figures. If they agree across all three documents, you can talk about the opportunity with confidence. If they do not, fix them before someone else finds them.

This article is general information, not financial, legal or tax advice. If you are planning a raise, talk to BDM Capital.

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