6.1. Project settings

The project settings comprise the base inputs of a project and are split in four areas:

1. General
2. Project assumptions
3. Types of input
4. Users

It is also possible to upload your project logo.

General

Project name

The title of your project.

Project description

Enter a brief description of your project. Although its non-mandatory, this field can be useful.

The starting year

The first year of forecasting of your project.

Currency

Select the currency for forecasting the financial statements reports. All inputs about pricings, costs, investments and financing must be stated in this currency. It has no impact on calculations, but it is relevant when you download reports.

Country

Where will the project be located.

Account

It’s the account of the user who owns the project.

Base project assumptions

The base project assumptions are a set of assumptions which are mostly related with tax purposes:

• General VAT rate.
• Company social security rate.
• Corporate tax rate.
• Number of salary months.

General VAT rate

The Value Added Tax, or VAT, is a general based consumption tax assessed on the value added to goods and services. When you set the General VAT rate in the project settings, it will be automatically pre-set for every product or service sold, for every item of cost or investment. Nevertheless, you will be able to change the VAT rate for each particular item. So, if you are selling a product both domestically and to the international market you may set a VAT rate to the products that are sold domestically and set the products sold abroad without VAT – normally goods which are sold for export or services are not subject to VAT.

Learn more about VAT in the Tax and Social Security manual.

Corporate tax rate

It refers to the tax rate on the profits of the company. Although some countries apply also a direct rate on revenues, CASFLO APP does not simulate that.

Learn more about Corporate tax in the Tax and Social Security manual

Company Social Security Rate

In many countries there are two applicable social security rates, one upon workers and one upon companies. The social security rate that is applicable to the company increases the cost of labor and therefore needs to be accounted for.

In CASFLO APP, you only have to set the social security rate that is applied to companies.

Learn more about Social Security in the Tax and Social Security manual

Number of salary months

In most countries, workers are paid on a 12-month salary basis. But there are some countries where it is either practice or mandatory by law the payment of extra salary months.

If you are not sure of the number of salary months to be assumed and there is no pre-set value, it is advisable to input a 12-month payment.

Types of input

Depending on your plans, you can change the method of input for some variables:

• Raw materials and consumables by sales percentage or item.
• Salary expenses by category or employee.
• Income statement by nature or functions.

Raw materials and consumables input method

There are two options to compute the cost of raw materials and consumables:

• By sales percentage: for each product or service, its cost of production will be calculated as a percentage of the revenue.
• By item: for each product or service you have the freedom to choose the items of cost (the elements that compose a product or service) and their value.

Base plans accounts only have access to input the costs by sales percentage. On Full Plan and Full & Custom Plan users can decide which method is more appropriated for each project.

The difference between the calculations relies essentially on the possibility to go more in depth to the structure of the costs.

Learn more on the section about Revenues and raw materials.

Salary expenses input method

There are two methods to input the cost of salary expenses:

• By category: the costs are set per different categories of workers and you need to input their average yearly gross salary, number of workers per category, prizes and non-social security payments.
• By employee: you can input the costs per each worker by stating his/hers starting date with the company, monthly salary, annual prizes and annual non-social security payments.

Learn more in the section about Employees’ Benefits.

Income Statement input method

When you activate this input method, you can decide which type of income statement that you want to be computed (by nature or by functions). Income statement by nature expresses the accounts by their type. However, it might by important for your stakeholders to understand the cost structure and for that matter the income statement by functions could be more useful.

The cost structure that will be asked to be inputed will have the following categorization:

• Cost of goods (COGS).
• General & administration.
• Sales & Marketing.
• Research & Development (R&D).

This categorization is applicable to operating expenses and employees’ benefits.

Learn more about the Income Statement on the Accounting and Reporting manual.

Users

In this section you can add and remove users to your project. You can only add users that are already linked to your account. You will be presented with a list of users that connected to your account. Just choose which ones should be able to cooperate with you on the project.

The users that you add to the project will be able to see results, download reports and edit assumptions (even if they have a Demo user type of account). You (or any other user) will not be able to trace back any changes that have been made, so make sure that the users you add is someone you trust.

When you create the project, the your user will be the only that is linked to the project, as the owner.