Template · Finance
Break-even Analysis template
For finding how much you have to sell before you stop losing money, and how much room the plan has to be wrong. Leave it alone when costs cannot be split into fixed and variable, as in a business where every job is priced from scratch. Instead Unit Economics, job by job: what each one earns after what it costs to deliver.
Download it
Nothing here asks for an email. The files are static and you can link straight to them.
Or work it through here
Enter the fixed costs the decision creates, the realistic net price and variable cost per unit, and your expected sales. The break-even point and margin of safety compute below. Read the break-even point against capacity and credible demand, and the margin of safety as the plan's tolerance for a wrong forecast.
Inputs
Result
- Contribution per unit
- £5.7
- Contribution margin ratio
- 60%
- Break-even point
- 600 units
- Break-even revenue
- £5,700
- Margin of safety
- 33.3%
Break-even chart
What you may do with it
This sheet, meaning our drawing and layout of it, is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Use it commercially, put it in a client deck, print it for a workshop, adapt it. Keep the attribution line that is printed on the sheet and you have met the licence.
Originator: Walter Rautenstrauch (populariser), with earlier roots in Henry Hess and Charles E. Knoeppel. The framework itself is not ours to license, and the written entry behind this page, its worked example, critiques and sources, stays all rights reserved. The full licence position is set out in plain English.
Before you fill it in
A blank template is the easy part. The entry behind it covers how to run Break-even Analysis properly, a worked example, the pitfalls real teams hit, and the situations where it is the wrong tool and something else would serve better.