Which projects should we fund this year?
Every planning cycle ends the same way: more good projects than money or people. This model puts 20 candidates, each with an NPV, three years of cash costs, and three years of staff hours, up against your annual budgets and team capacity. The optimizer makes the fund or skip call for every row at once.
Finance Advanced Optimization free
After you install, this is the model to open.
Project Portfolio Selector
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
Solving at the defaults produces a fund list no ranking exercise would find.
- Optimal portfolio NPV
- $7.59M funds 9 of the 20 candidate projects
- Gain over rank-by-NPV
- $1.16M funding straight down the NPV list reaches only $6.43M
- Year 1 budget committed
- $2.50M of $2.50M first-year cash is spent to the last dollar
- Tightest labor year
- 895 of 900 hrs year 2 leaves just 5 staff hours of slack
The optimizer funds 9 of 20 projects for $7.59M of NPV, which is $1.16M more than funding straight down the NPV ranking. Cloud migration ties for the highest NPV at $950K yet gets cut: its 495 staff hours are the heaviest in the portfolio and would crowd out two leaner winners. With year 1 cash fully spent and year 2 labor down to 5 spare hours, capacity is the real lever: adding 50 staff hours per year lifts the ceiling by $190K.
The model
Twenty candidate projects compete for three annual cash budgets and 900 staff hours per year. Each project gets a binary fund decision.
| Candidate projects | 20, each fund or skip |
| NPV per project | $610K to $950K |
| Cash budget by year | $2.5M / $2.8M / $2.9M |
| Team capacity | 900 staff hours per year |
| Total ask if all 20 ran | $16.6M cash, up to 2,375 hrs in one year |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
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- What pre-money valuation can your startup actually justify?What Is the Startup Worth to an Investor?
- When the company sells, what do you take home?Exit Payout Reality Check
- How much gross profit does each inventory dollar earn?What Does Each Dollar of Stock Earn in a Year?
- Where does a 35% hurdle rate actually come from?What Return Should a Risky Project Have to Clear?
- Which assumption is this strategic bet actually resting on?What Has to Be True: Strategic Bet Stress Test
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Optimization in Google Sheets.