In our sense check, firstly check the times series. Here I'm looking at revenues and I can see they've gone from 404 to 416, 428, 441 That looks fine! But I see operating costs in year 3 went down. That looks a little bit strange If you've had a large sales growth, that could have been caused by a legitimate reason, by an acquisition? However, if you do see a large split, that definitely is reason for us to check Second of all, check with your peer group, if our sales are way lower than our competitors, something may be wrong in the model And lastly, check your "family" relationships, so we just looked at revenues versus operating costs But if you've also had your revenues go up, you should expect operating costs to go up, accounts receivable to go up Equity to go up, maybe inventory to go up? So do go looking around! Next up, structure checking. I want to make sure that I've got consistent period columns So here I've got column F and column F always refers to year 1 Column G always refers to year 2 This will be the same on my balance sheet, my income statement, operating statistics, assumptions, debt calculations Everything! So do make sure that if you've got a formula on your balance sheet in column F, that it should probably be linking to other column Fs The one example where you might find this doesn't happen, is where you have a growth percentage A growth percentage will have this year and last year's period, so column E being referenced. Because you're growing on top of last year Second of all, make sure you've got consistent row labels. Here in my assumptions, I've got receivables on the top And the balance sheet I've got receivables on the top, in assumptions I then have inventories and then prepaids I have exactly the same order in the balance sheet, inventories then prepaids Do make sure, you get them in the same order. It means that inconsistent formulas become more obvious Last up, if you find in your final period (so maybe column K or M) that you've got a sudden zero appearing That may mean that you've linked to the wrong column Let's say that I'm in M10, I may find that I'm actually linking to an assumption in N. And N is a zero assumption There's nothing in it, it's completely blank cell So check for a structure issue back in period 1, period 1 was F. Have I actually linked to an assumption in G? That's an error Last up was our stress checks, change an assumption. Make it bigger and make sure that any related items then do change If you do decide to change your sales though, that will link to many many different lines changing You may want to choose something else that only links to one or two items Therefore, much easier to see any errors Next up, checks on family relationships. If PP&E goes up, that should be because cash has gone down If your debts gone up, then cash should go up Once you've made these stress changes, so you've put some very large figures in Then make sure that the model still balances, after those relationships have changed Once you've done all of those then do make sure that you undo your stress test And you don't leave some very large figure lurking around your model