Financial Model Overview
The Financial Model is the core of Clockwork. It gives you a complete view of your business finances — historical actuals and forward-looking forecasts — all in one place, automatically built from your accounting data.
As soon as you connect your accounting software, Clockwork analyzes up to 3 years of transaction history to generate a baseline forecast. That forecast updates automatically as your data syncs, so you're always working with current numbers.
What's in the Financial Model?
The Financial Model is structured as a P&L (Profit & Loss), organized into:
Revenue — all income accounts from your accounting system
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) — direct costs associated with delivering your product or service
Operating Expenses — all other business expenses
Net Income — the bottom line, calculated automatically
Each row shows your historical actuals alongside Clockwork's forecast, so you can see where you've been and where you're headed at a glance.
Adjusting your view
You can customize how the model displays to focus on what matters most:
Expand rows — Click the arrow on any total row (Revenue, COGS, Operating Expenses) or group to see the underlying account-level detail.
Change time periods — Use the Columns selector to toggle between monthly, quarterly, and annual views.
Adjust variance display — Use the Variance dropdown to choose how you want to see your actuals vs. forecast comparison (e.g. $ variance, % variance).
How the baseline forecast works
Clockwork's AI analyzes your historical transaction data to identify trends, patterns, and seasonality for each account. It uses this to generate a baseline forecast — a best estimate of where each account is headed based on past behavior.
The baseline assumes your business continues on its current trajectory. It's a strong starting point, but it won't know about planned changes in your business — that's where Assumptions come in.
Customizing your forecast with Assumptions
Assumptions let you override the baseline forecast for any account, for any time period. You can build rules based on growth rates, percentages of other accounts, price × quantity inputs, or custom formulas. Assumptions are the way to layer in what you know about your future plans — new hires, new revenue streams, cost changes, and more.
See Customizing Your Forecast with Assumptions for a full walkthrough.
Organizing your accounts
You can group accounts together, add custom rows, and organize your P&L layout to match how you think about your business. Groups can be expanded or collapsed to keep the view clean while still allowing you to drill into detail when needed.
Exporting your model
Need to share your model or work with the data in Excel? Click the export icon in the top right of the Financial Model to download the current view as a spreadsheet. The export reflects whatever columns and time periods are currently displayed.
Need help? Reach out to our support chat in the bottom right of your screen any time.