A monthly investor MIS, ready to fill in.
A free Excel template for the monthly MIS Indian startups send to investors. P&L against plan, cash and runway, the KPIs behind them, receivables and statutory dues, with a one-page summary that updates when you pick the month.
Why a template helps, and where it stops helping
Most founders build their first investor update from scratch, the night before it's due. The second one gets built from scratch too, because the first was a document rather than a system, and by the third the numbers in it no longer quite agree with the first two.
A template fixes the part of that problem that's about structure. The same lines, in the same order, with the same calculations, every month. Once your data is in, the summary builds itself, variances against plan are calculated for you, and runway is worked out the same way every time instead of however seemed reasonable that evening.
What a template can't fix is the data underneath it. If the books aren't closed properly, revenue isn't recognised in the right month, or the bank hasn't been reconciled, a well-formatted MIS just presents the wrong numbers more convincingly. So this page covers both: what's in the file and how to use it, and the few habits that make the numbers going into it trustworthy.
The file opens with example figures for a fictional company, so every formula shows you something from the first minute. Replace them with your own.
What's inside the file
- Read me
- How to use it, in six steps, and the few conventions it follows: amounts in rupees lakh, an April to March year, shaded cells for inputs.
- Monthly data
- Where everything goes in. Three revenue lines, direct and variable costs, operating costs by type, cash received and paid, the reconciled bank balance, and four operating counts. Below that, the same lines for your plan.
- Summary
- Choose a month from the dropdown. You get this month against plan with variances, last month, year to date against plan to date, runway on a three-month average burn, and three commentary boxes.
- KPIs
- Revenue growth, gross, contribution and EBITDA margin, customer churn, revenue per customer and per head, and net burn, calculated for every month with actuals.
- Working capital
- A receivables ageing table by customer and a statutory dues tracker for GST, TDS, PF, ESIC, professional tax and advance tax.
- Metric dictionary
- One written definition per number, with its data source and owner. The sheet that keeps your MIS consistent from month to month.
Setting it up
- 01Rename the three revenue lines to the way your business actually earns: plans, products, service types or locations. If you need more lines, insert rows inside the block so the total still picks them up.
- 02Decide what counts as a direct cost and what counts as a variable cost, and write it on the Metric dictionary sheet before entering any numbers. This one decision affects every margin in the pack.
- 03Enter actuals for every month of the current financial year so far, from closed books. Where a month isn't properly closed yet, leave it out rather than estimating.
- 04Enter the bank balance at each month end from the bank statement, reconciled across every account, gateway and wallet.
- 05Enter your plan for the full year. If you don't have one, put in what you expected at the start of the year, even roughly. Numbers compared with nothing tell investors very little.
- 06Go to Summary, pick the latest closed month, and check the numbers against what you know. If something looks wrong, it usually is, and it's better found now.
The first setup takes longer than the monthly update, mostly because of step two and step five. After that, a month's update is entering one column of actuals, refreshing working capital, and writing the commentary.
The month-end habits the numbers depend on
The template is only as good as the column of actuals you type into it. Four habits make the difference between an MIS investors rely on and one they quietly double-check.
- Close by a fixed day
- Pick a working day, say the eighth, by which the books for the previous month are closed, and hold it. A predictable close is what makes a predictable MIS possible.
- Reconcile every account
- Bank accounts, the payment gateway, any wallets or card accounts. The closing balance in the MIS should match statements to the rupee.
- Accrue what hasn't been billed
- Hosting, contractors and rent invoices often arrive late. Book an estimate in the month the cost belongs to, or the month looks better than it was and the next one worse.
- Recognise revenue when it's earned
- Annual prepaid plans spread across twelve months. Milestone projects recognised as the work is delivered. Invoice date is a cash event, not a revenue one.
None of these needs a finance team. They need someone who does them every month without being reminded. If that isn't happening yet, fixing it is worth more than any template.
The summary page, line by line
| Line | What it tells an investor | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue against plan | Whether the business is doing what you said it would | A variance you can't explain in one sentence |
| Gross margin | Whether delivery gets cheaper or dearer as you grow | Changes caused by a definition moving, not the business |
| Contribution margin | What each rupee of revenue leaves after every cost that moves with it | Payment fees and commissions left out |
| Total operating costs | Whether spending is on plan | Annual costs landing in one month and distorting it |
| EBITDA | The operating result before depreciation and tax | One-off items not called out in commentary |
| Net burn | Cash consumed, excluding money raised | Receipts from a fundraise counted as customer cash |
| Closing bank balance | What's actually left | Balances not reconciled to the statement |
| Runway | Months of cash at recent burn | A single unusual month, which the three-month average smooths |
Investors read this page first and many read nothing else. That's fine, as long as the page answers the obvious questions on its own. If revenue is 8% under plan, the commentary directly underneath should say why before anyone has to ask.
Writing the commentary
The three boxes on the summary sheet are what turns a spreadsheet into an update. Keep each one short, and write it like you'd say it to an investor you respect.
- What moved this month
- The two or three numbers that changed most against plan, with the size and the cause. 'Revenue ₹48.3 lakh, 3% under plan; two renewals slipped into October' is a complete answer.
- What we're doing about it
- Specific actions with owners and dates, or a plain statement that no change is needed and why. Avoid confidence without evidence.
- What we need from investors
- Introductions, hiring help, advice on a decision. Specific asks get answered. 'Any support is welcome' doesn't.
Bad months deserve the same format, not a longer one. Size, cause, cash impact, what's next. If something serious is coming, like losing a major customer, call your lead investor before the MIS goes out. Nobody should learn about a problem from a spreadsheet.
Adapting it to your business
- Software companies: rename the revenue lines by plan or by new, expansion and services revenue. Add ARR, net revenue retention and CAC payback to the KPIs, with definitions in the dictionary.
- IT services and agencies: revenue lines by service type or major client. Add utilisation, realisation and bench cost. Put receivables by client front and centre, because that's where cash goes missing.
- Restaurants and cloud kitchens: revenue lines by channel, with aggregator revenue shown before commission and commission as a variable cost. Add orders per day and average order value by outlet.
- Healthcare services: revenue lines by service line or centre. Add patient volume, revenue per episode, payer mix and receivable days for insurance and corporate payers.
Whatever you add, add it to the Metric dictionary at the same time. The metrics that cause trouble in diligence are almost always the ones that were added without a definition and then quietly redefined.
What the template doesn't do
It doesn't pull data from your accounting software. That's deliberate: most early-stage companies change charts of accounts and tools often enough that automated links break, and typing one column a month from closed books is a useful check in itself.
It isn't a set of financial statements. There's no balance sheet, and the P&L lines are management lines, not the statutory format your auditor uses. Investors know the difference and expect both: MIS monthly or quarterly, audited accounts annually.
And it isn't a board pack. A board pack adds decisions, risks and compliance on top of the MIS. There's a separate free board pack template for that, built to sit alongside this one.
Its runway figure is also deliberately simple. Three months of average burn is a sound headline, but it doesn't know about a large annual payment next month or a customer who is about to churn. When cash is genuinely tight, a week-by-week forecast is the right tool, and the MIS should say that one is being run.
Mistakes that make an MIS less trusted
- Changing a definition without restating earlier months.
- Taking the bank balance from the app on the day of writing instead of the reconciled month-end figure.
- Counting money raised from investors as cash received, which makes burn look lower than it is.
- Recognising annual prepaid invoices as revenue in the month they're raised.
- Leaving the plan rows empty, so nothing is ever over or under anything.
- Sending the pack late with no note. A two-line message saying when it's coming costs nothing.
Get the file
Excel file, six sheets, opens in Excel or Google Sheets. Free to download and use. Nothing to sign up for.