Financial Model, Real Estate, Service Businesses

Break-Even, Business Valuation, Cash Flow Projections, Debt Service Coverage, Financial Model, Loans, Mergers and Acquisitions Model, Pro-Forma

Most funeral-home templates are startup or operating forecasts, and most brokers headline a call count. But a funeral home’s earnings hinge on its revenue per call — and the service mix is shifting. The US cremation rate is ~63% and rising toward ~82% by the mid-2040s (NFDA); direct cremation is ~25% of the calls but only ~10% of the revenue. A firm can look busy while its revenue per call quietly erodes. This 5-year, SBA-lender-ready model reads the firm the way a disciplined buyer and a bank do — on the blended revenue per call, normalized SDE, and the trend.

What it does

Call-Volume + Service-Mix engine — at-need calls times a blended revenue per call from three service types (a traditional burial, a cremation with a service, a low-cost direct cremation), each at its own price. The ~$6,082 blended revenue per call and the ~63% cremation rate, not the raw call count, decide the deal.
The honesty a broker’s sheet skips. It recognizes bad debt / uncollectibles as an explicit line, hires a licensed funeral director to replace the owner who works the calls and sells the pre-need, and prices on SDE after those — so the true DSCR (1.36x) sits next to the naive broker DSCR (1.89x). The gap is the director and the bad debt.
Pre-need as future pipeline, not cash. The pre-need backlog is funded into a trust or insurance and recognized at-need, over years — a lender won’t treat it as today’s cash flow, and you shouldn’t pay a current-earnings multiple on it. The model prices the at-need business and shows the backlog separately.
Real estate own vs lease. A toggle for a leasehold base case (rent in overhead, 10-year SBA term) versus a fee-simple purchase of the building and any crematory (25-year term).
The down-case that matters. The sector’s #1 structural risk is the accelerating cremation shift. An 8-point mix move toward direct cremation and a 4% call slip drops DSCR to 0.88x — below the 1.25x floor, because overhead (staff, facility, fleet) is fixed.
SBA 7(a) capital stack — buyer equity, a seller note (full-standby vs amortizing toggle as the DSCR lever), and the SBA loan that fills the rest, with the lender’s DSCR gate and a 5-year cash-on-cash and equity-multiple exit. No IRR is printed (deliberately — on one small deal it is hostage to the exit multiple).

Base case (Balanced Community, editable): ~350 at-need calls, cremation rate 63%, revenue $2.13M at a 62% gross margin, SDE $532,660 (25%), Adjusted EBITDA $437,660, price 3.75x SDE = $1.997M, SBA loan $1.76M at 80.8% leverage, true DSCR 1.36x vs naive 1.89x, cremation-shift down-case 0.88x, full-service coverage 4.20x, MOIC 4.58x.

Inside: a 10-sheet Excel model (every calc a formula, Google-Sheets-safe, no macros), a 23-page PDF user guide, and a benchmarks sheet with sourced ranges. Three firm profiles (Burial-Traditional / Balanced Community / Cremation-Forward) reload the multiple, working-capital peg, capex and bad-debt rate. Educational planning tool, not financial, legal, tax or investment advice.

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