Most staffing-agency templates are startup or operating forecasts, and most brokers headline a big revenue number. But a staffing agency’s revenue is a vanity metric — most of the top line is contractor wages passed straight through — and temp staffing eats cash to run, because you pay contractors weekly but collect from clients at DSO ~50 days. This 5-year, SBA-lender-ready model reads the agency the way a disciplined buyer and a bank do: on the spread, the working-capital gap, and normalized SDE after a real recruiter.

The engine — Bill-Pay Spread + DSO / Payroll-Funding Working Capital. Gross profit is built bottom-up: temp/contract billed hours at your bill rate less the loaded contractor cost (pay rate x payroll burden), plus direct-hire placement fees and managed-service work. In the base case, on ~$6.21M of revenue only ~$1.68M is gross profit (~27% blended margin, ~20% temp spread) — because ~70% of the top line is pass-through contractor wages. You underwrite the spread, not the headline.

The working-capital gap the SBA loan won’t cover. You pay contractors weekly but collect at DSO ~50 days, so the model sizes the receivables gap (~$850k of AR, ~$766k of net working capital) and funds it on a separate payroll-funding / ABL facility. That facility’s ~$78k of interest hits cash flow before DSCR — the cost a broker’s sheet ignores.

The honesty a broker’s sheet skips. It reads SDE on gross profit (SDE $543,450 is 8.8% of revenue but 32% of gross profit), pays a market-rate recruiter to replace the owner-biller, and carries the payroll-funding cost — so the true DSCR (1.53x) sits next to the naive broker DSCR (2.48x). One-off direct-hire fees are re-rated so you don’t pay a recurring multiple for lumpy placements (~$227k overpay-avoided).

The down-case that matters. Staffing has severe operating leverage and is deeply cyclical: a modest demand contraction plus spread compression drops DSCR to 0.64x, under the 1.25x floor — and real recessions were far worse (2024 staffing-business sales fell 27-42% year-on-year). The 5.38x recurring-spread coverage is the cushion.

SBA 7(a) capital stack — buyer equity, a seller note (full-standby vs amortizing toggle as the DSCR lever), and the SBA loan, alongside the separate payroll-funding line, with the lender’s DSCR gate, a goodwill $500k valuation-trigger flag, 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).

Inside: a 10-sheet Excel model (every calc a formula, Google-Sheets-safe, no macros), a 24-page PDF user guide, and a benchmarks sheet with sourced ranges. Three agency profiles (Light-Industrial & Clerical / Balanced Commercial Staffing / Professional & Direct-Hire Forward) reload the multiple, DSO, payroll-funding rate and client retention. Educational planning tool, not financial, legal, tax or investment advice; not affiliated with the SBA, the ASA or any lender.

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