Learning goals

Defer a capital purchase and trace its cash and depreciation effects
Defer the planned hire and read the payroll consequence
Quantify each lever against the covenant cushion
Apply lever etiquette: change one input, note the effect, restore

Concepts

Lever 1: defer the camera kit

The cameras and production kit ($6,300.00, Sep 3, 2026) are marked deferrable in the asset notes. Two ways to defer: move the in-service date past December (the cash-outlay formula then returns $0.00 for 2026), or set the cost to zero for the what-if. Either way the effects ripple exactly as the model is wired:

Cash Flow K16 (September capital purchases) drops from $6,300.00 to $0.00.
Cash Roll-Forward K8 (September closing cash) rises from $61,425.38 to $67,725.38, and December closes at $86,765.15 instead of $80,465.15 — a $6,300.00 better year.
Monthly P&L row 25 steps back from $775.00 to $600.00 per month from September (the cameras' $175.00 disappears), lifting net profit by the same $175.00 a month.

Lever 2: defer the hire

The planned junior designer starts Jul 1, 2026 at $4,940.00 loaded per month. Moving that start date changes three things at once: Staff & Payroll J9 (months in the year) falls from 6 to 3 for an October start, K10 (FY roster cost) falls from $388,962.00 to $374,142.00, and Monthly P&L row 14 stays at $25,300.00 a month for three extra months, adding roughly $14,820.00 of net profit versus the Base plan.

Lever 2 is bigger than Lever 1: people are the studio's largest controllable cost block, which is why the hire decision deserves the scenario spread from Lesson 15.

Read the levers against the covenant

Under Base neither lever is needed — the cushion bottoms at $10,384.00 in January. Under Worst, where the covenant is already breached from March, the levers change the size of the hole, not its existence: deferring the camera buys $6,300.00 and deferring the hire buys up to $29,640.00 of 2026 cash, but the Worst year still ends short.

That is the honest reading: levers buy time and comfort; they do not fix a demand problem. If the levers still leave you below the floor, the conversation is with the lender or the pipeline, not with the spreadsheet.

Lever etiquette

Three habits keep what-ifs honest: (1) change one input at a time so the effect is attributable; (2) note the before-and-after headline numbers — net profit and December closing cash — before moving on; (3) restore the input when the exploration ends, so the plan on disk is still the plan you committed to. A model full of half-explored changes is worse than no model.

Practice

Fixed case: Harbor Creative Studio LLC, a four-person design studio in Austin, Texas, planning calendar year 2026. Cached numbers are the Base scenario. Pale-green cells are formulas; white cells are typed inputs. The exercise opens on the sheet this lesson teaches. Cell D7 (cost of the camera kit) is blank: retype the cost, then run the deferral what-if.

Open CapEx & Loan — The exercise opens on CapEx & Loan. Row 7 is the camera kit: in-service date Sep 3, 2026, cost $6,300.00, 3-year life, note “Deferrable to 2027 if cash runs tight.”
Retype the cost in D7 — Cell D7 is empty. Type 6300 and confirm it shows $6,300.00. F7 (monthly depreciation) should read $175.00 and G7 (2026 outlay) $6,300.00.
Run the deferral what-if — Set D7 to 0 and read the ripples: Monthly P&L row 25 steps to $600.00 (not $775.00) from September; Cash Flow K16 reads $0.00; Cash Roll-Forward K8 reads $67,725.38 and N8 reads $86,765.15.
Restore and try the hire lever — Set D7 back to 6300. Open Staff & Payroll and change Ellis Townsend's start date in D9 to Oct 1, 2026: J9 should read 3, K10 $374,142.00, and Monthly P&L row 14 stays $25,300.00 through September.
Restore the plan — Set D9 back to Jul 1, 2026 (7/1/2026) and confirm K10 reads $388,962.00 and row 14 steps to $29,300.00 in July again. Use Reset Data if any cell misbehaves.

Online exercise

The spreadsheet below is editable — follow the practice steps right on this page. Steps that need ribbon menus should be done in your own Excel with the downloadable practice file.

表格加载中…

Checklist

Work through each item; when every box passes, this lesson is done:

☐ Retyped D7 = $6,300.00 and confirmed F7 monthly depreciation $175.00
☐ Deferral verified: September closing cash rises $6,300.00 to $67,725.38 and depreciation drops to $600.00
☐ Hire lever verified: October start drops J9 to 3 and K10 to $374,142.00
☐ Restored both inputs to the cached Base plan (K10 = $388,962.00)

💵 Lesson 17 · What-if levers: defer the camera, defer the hire