Читать книгу See-Through Modelling - Dominic Robertson - Страница 47

The model can be thought of as an ‘i/o’ or ‘input/output’ system. This means a system that takes inputs and produces outputs from those inputs. All computer software is a type of i/o system.

The project finance financial model takes inputs in the form of actuals and forecast inputs and uses coded calculations to produce outputs. The outputs are primarily the company financial statements but also the further calculations thereon, like the shareholder returns and the debt cover ratios. It is clear that to properly drive the model the user needs to at least be able to distinguish between the inputs and the rest.

Since there is a distinction between the inputs, calculations and outputs of a model it is also normal for the modeller to adopt a convention in this regard. For example, a yellow background is the wide-ranging convention for inputs. Calculations are performed on calculation sheets rather than input sheets and output (or report) sheets are marked by colouring the tab green.