Create what-if scenarios modeling revenue changes, contract wins and losses, and cost adjustments—then compare them side-by-side to stress test EBITDA, covenant compliance, and cash flow.
Compute All button on the Dashboard must have been run at least once—this creates the Base Case from your current forecast data.From the main navigation, select Scenario Planning. Three tabs are available:
| Tab | Purpose |
|---|---|
Build Scenarios | Create scenarios and add adjustments |
Compare Results | Side-by-side scenario comparison |
Covenant Dashboard | Stress test covenant compliance across scenarios |
The Base Case is automatically created and marked with a star (⭐). It represents your current forecast with no adjustments—your P&L, EBITDA, debt service, and covenant metrics as they stand today.
You cannot edit the Base Case. It refreshes automatically when you run Compute All from the Dashboard. Every scenario you create is measured against it.
New Scenario expander on the Build Scenarios tab.Create Scenario.The system assigns a color to the scenario for chart identification. You can create as many scenarios as you need.
Each adjustment is a single lever that modifies one dimension of your financials. The levers are designed to not overlap—each touches a specific part of the P&L without affecting other levers.
Increases or decreases all revenue by a percentage. Direct costs, labor, and fringe cascade proportionally. Best for broad market changes ("Federal spending drops 15%") or growth assumptions.
What cascades automatically: direct costs scale proportionally, direct labor scales with direct costs, fringe recalculates based on new labor base, bonus auto-adjusts based on the gross profit impact.
Same as above but you enter a fixed dollar amount. Use when you have a specific dollar impact in mind (e.g., "−$2,000,000 from losing a specific task order").
Changes indirect labor costs only (overhead staff, G&A staff, BD staff). Does not affect direct labor or revenue. Fringe recalculates based on the new indirect labor base. Use this to model headcount reductions in overhead, hiring freezes, or G&A expansion.
Changes non-labor, non-calculated indirect costs: facilities, indirect expenses, and unallowable costs. The percentage distributes proportionally across these three categories based on their base case ratio.
This lever does NOT touch revenue, direct costs, labor, fringe, or bonus—those have their own levers. Use it for cost reduction initiatives (consolidating offices) or modeling higher costs (new office lease).
Replaces the base fringe rate with a new rate for this scenario. Use for sensitivity analysis on benefits costs, modeling a workforce mix shift, or testing the impact of a plan design change.
Directly sets the bonus pool change vs. the base case.
This overrides the automatic bonus calculation. By default, when you change revenue, the system auto-adjusts bonus based on the GP impact. If you add a bonus override, your entered amount replaces that auto-calculation entirely.
These are the most powerful levers because they're time-aware—they prorate revenue and cost to the exact months that fall within each fiscal year.
Two input modes:
How it calculates:
Monthly Revenue = Ceiling / Duration (months)
FY Revenue = Monthly Revenue × Months Active in That FY
FY Cost = FY Revenue × (1 - Margin%)
Example: Win a $1.2M / 18-month contract starting July 2025 at 30% GP:
FY2025 (Jul–Sep): 3 months → $200K revenue, $140K cost
FY2026 (Oct–Sep): 12 months → $800K revenue, $560K cost
FY2027 (Oct–Dec): 3 months → $200K revenue, $140K costModels losing one or more existing contracts. Revenue and cost are removed from the loss date forward using the contract's actual forecast data.
End of PoP (uses the contract's period of performance end date) or Specific Date (you pick the month).Adds or subtracts a dollar amount directly to net income—no P&L structure changes. Use for one-time items that don't fit other categories: litigation settlements, asset disposals, executive bonuses outside the normal structure, or acquisition-related costs.
| Lever | What It Touches | What It Leaves Alone |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue % / $ | Revenue, direct costs, direct labor, fringe (via labor), bonus (via GP) | Indirect labor, facilities, indirect expense |
| Indirect Labor % | Indirect labor, fringe (via IL labor base) | Revenue, direct costs, facilities, bonus |
| Indirect Non-Labor % | Facilities, indirect expense, unallowable | Revenue, labor, fringe, bonus |
| Bonus Override | Bonus pool only | Everything else |
| Fringe Rate Override | Fringe calculation rate | All dollar amounts directly |
| Contract Win/Loss | Revenue and cost (time-aware) | Indirect structure |
| Custom NI | Net income only | P&L structure |
If you add both a 15% revenue increase and an 8% indirect cost reduction to the same scenario, the system processes them independently with no overlap and no double-counting.
Once your adjustments are configured, click Compute Scenario. The system loads the base case P&L, applies each adjustment in sequence, runs the fringe cascade, runs the LOC rebalancing waterfall, and computes covenant metrics.
Switch to the Compare Results tab. Use the multi-select dropdown to choose scenarios. Select a fiscal year with the slider.
Six metric tiles appear for each scenario:
| Metric | What It Tells You |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Total revenue—green delta = more revenue than base |
| Gross Profit | Revenue minus direct costs |
| Adj. EBITDA | The covenant numerator—earnings before interest, taxes, D&A |
| Net Income | Bottom line after all costs |
| DSCR | EBITDA / Annual Debt Service—higher is better; below 1.2x = covenant risk |
| Leverage | Funded Debt / Adj. EBITDA—lower is better; above 3.5x = covenant risk |
Expand the P&L Comparison to see the full income statement line-by-line for each scenario side by side, with deltas from the base case. Expand EBITDA & Net Income Trends to see how the impact compounds or recovers over multiple years.
This runs automatically behind the scenes when you compute a scenario.
When a scenario changes your net income, it changes your cash flow. The system runs a sequential year-by-year waterfall:
Year 1:
Base Cash from Ops = $7.2M
+ NI Delta from Adjustments = -$3.3M (downside scenario)
= New Cash from Ops = $3.9M
IF Cash < $500K minimum: DRAW on LOC to reach $500K
IF Cash > $500K AND LOC has a balance: PAY DOWN LOC with excess
→ New LOC Balance → New Funded Debt → New LeverageLeverage changes in two ways in a downside scenario: EBITDA goes down (bad for leverage) AND funded debt goes up (more LOC drawn). This compounds the covenant impact. Year 1's LOC balance becomes Year 2's starting point.
Switch to the Covenant Dashboard tab. This is the executive decision-making view.
Shows Debt Service Coverage Ratio for every scenario across every year:
The cushion shown (+$X.XM) tells you how much EBITDA could drop before hitting the threshold.
Funded Debt / Adj. EBITDA for every scenario. Inverted from DSCR—lower is better. Green ≤2.63x, Yellow ≤3.50x, Red >3.50x. The cushion shows how much additional debt you could absorb before breaching—useful when evaluating whether you can take on acquisition debt under each scenario.
| Scenario | Adjustments | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Base Case ⭐ | None (auto) | Current plan |
| Upside | +15% revenue, +$500K bonus | Best case—all wins materialize |
| Downside | −20% revenue, −10% indirect non-labor, lose 1–2 contracts | Stress test—what breaks? |
| Scenario | Adjustments | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Only | −15% revenue | Pure demand shock |
| Cost Only | −10% indirect non-labor, −8% indirect labor | Pure cost reduction |
| Contract Loss | Lose specific contract X | Single-event risk |
| Combined | All of the above | Compound stress |
The Operator's View
Arcvue has grown to offer a lot, but the original impetus for building it was simpler than it might appear. The ability to actually see your financial data—never mind visualize it—is a gap in almost every ERP on the market. Tools like Power BI and Tableau close the visualization gap, and they’re genuinely powerful. But even with a great implementation, you’re still left with a fundamental problem: a wealth of historical data and nothing but Excel to model what the future might look like.
That’s the gap Scenario Manager was built to close. Every change to a P&L or balance sheet has a ripple effect somewhere else—that’s the nature of business operations and accounting. Model a contract loss and you’re not just moving a revenue line. You’re touching direct labor, fringe, accounts receivable, wages payable, cash from operations. The list goes on, and Excel doesn’t chase it down for you.
We’ve lived through the 11PM Friday version of this problem—staring at a recompete submission due Monday, running mental math in the shower, ruminating on the downside without any real evidence to anchor to. We don’t want that for anyone. Go to Arcvue, model the contract loss, select the contract, and hit enter. You may not like what you see. But you can solve a known problem, or at least prepare for one. It’s the unknown that causes sleepless nights.
Common Questions
Compute All from the Dashboard, the base case updates, but existing scenarios still reflect their old computation. Click Compute Scenario on each adjusted scenario to recalculate against the new base.Bonus Override of $0—that locks the bonus at zero change.