Startup costs calculator

How the startup costs calculator works

Build a one-page picture of how much funding you need to launch. List your one-off setup costs and your monthly running costs, and the calculator helps you estimate the cash required to get to launch and through the early months before the business is self-sustaining.

Getting this right — and choosing the correct business structure from day one — avoids expensive mistakes. Our business start-up service guides you through it.

The costs first-timers underestimate

The forecast is usually wrong in three predictable places. Tax is not a cost people plan for in year one, and it arrives with payments on account attached. Your own drawings are not in most first forecasts at all. And the gap between invoicing and being paid is consistently modelled as shorter than it turns out to be.

Money spent before you started still counts

Expenditure in the seven years before trading begins can generally be relieved as though it were incurred on the first day — equipment, software, professional fees, market research, incorporation. People throw the receipts away because the business did not exist yet. Keep them. VAT paid before registration can also be recovered within limits once you register.

Break-even is a range, not a point

Run the forecast twice: once with revenue arriving a third slower than you expect, and once with costs a third higher. If the business survives both, the plan is robust. If it only works on the optimistic version, the plan is a hope with a spreadsheet attached.