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ValueMap is built around monthly business casing, and deliberately so. Traditional business case tools model cash flows at the annual level, back-loading all value realization and costs to the end of each year. That’s not how businesses actually operate: benefits don’t all land on December 31st, and costs don’t all hit on January 1st. Monthly modelling offers three meaningful advantages: More accuracy: Cash flows are captured at the month they actually occur. Because of the time value of money, a benefit realized in month 3 is worth more than the same benefit realized in month 12. Year-end assumptions systematically misstate present value. More accountability: Monthly projections create a concrete schedule that teams can be held to. Annual assumptions are easy to fudge - monthly ones are specific and reviewable. More routine tracking: With monthly granularity, actuals can be logged each month against projections. This creates a living business case rather than a static document that gets filed away after approval.

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Using ValueMap for yearly business cases

If your team is accustomed to traditional annual business cases and wants to replicate that structure in ValueMap, you can. The calculation logic will handle the discounting correctly. To model a yearly business case:

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Add cost objects as one-time, at the start of each year

Set the duration to One-time, set the start month to the first month of the year (e.g., January), and set recognition to Start (in advance). This replicates the CapEx-upfront assumption typical in yearly models.

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Add benefit objects as one-time, at the end of each year

Set the duration to One-time, set the start month to the last month of the year (e.g., December), and set recognition to End (in arrears). This replicates the end-of-year benefit realization assumption.

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Repeat for each year of the initiative horizon

Add one cost and one benefit object per year. ValueMap’s discounting logic will apply the correct monthly discount factors, producing NPV results equivalent to a traditional yearly model. This approach is a valid starting point - but once your team is comfortable with ValueMap, we encourage moving toward monthly projections to unlock the full accuracy and tracking benefits of the platform.