Startup Runway & Burn Rate Template
A startup runway and burn rate template tracks how much cash you're spending each month and translates that into a simple number: how many months of operating life you have left at the current rate.
For an early-stage company living off a fixed amount of cash — investor funding, a loan, or founder savings — this is one of the few numbers that matters more than almost anything else on the P&L. A profitable-looking month on paper doesn't help if the bank balance is dropping toward zero faster than you're raising or earning.
The template tracks starting cash and ending cash for each month, calculates monthly burn as the difference, and divides current cash by average monthly burn to get runway in months. A rolling average — trailing three months, for example — smooths out one-off spikes so the runway figure doesn't swing wildly from a single unusual month.
This only stays accurate if the cash and expense numbers are updated every month without fail, which is easy to let slip when things get busy. Finmap calculates burn rate and runway directly from your connected bank accounts, so the number is current whenever you check it instead of only as current as the last time someone updated the sheet.
