Skip to main content
Everything Ari builds, you can also build yourself. In this lesson we build a small revenue table for an imaginary coffee cart, without Ari, so you can see how cfo.ai’s Variables and formulas differ from spreadsheet cells. By the end you will have a Page with a table that calculates revenue from cups sold and price, and recalculates when you change a number. You need about 15 minutes and a desktop browser. Pages cannot be edited in a phone browser.
In a workspace with no Pages yet, the sidebar has no Model section. On the empty screen, choose Add block, then Table block. cfo.ai creates a Page with a table on it. Rename the Page from its title, then continue from step 3.
1

Create a Page

In the sidebar’s Model section, select the + button labeled New page. cfo.ai creates a Page named New Page and opens it.Click the New Page title at the top of the Page, type Coffee cart, and press Enter.
2

Add a Table block

On the empty Page, choose Table block.Notice the hint Build your table. A new table is blank until you add rows or columns.
3

Add your first Variable

Select Add row at the bottom of the table. In the search field, type Cups Sold, then select Create variable: Cups Sold.Notice that cfo.ai adds a row of months across the top, or of your workspace’s default period, such as quarters. A Variable is a named line of the Model, and it has one value for each period.
4

Type some values

Select the first month’s cell in the Cups Sold row and type 1000. Press Tab to move to the next month, type 1200, press Tab, type 1500, and press Enter.Notice the dashed underline under each number. It marks a cell that holds its own value.
5

Give a Variable one value for every month

Add another row and create a Variable named Price per Cup. Point at its row name and select the fx icon, Edit variable formula.The editor has two sections, Actuals and Forecast: the months up to your workspace’s Last close, and the months after it. Type 4 in Actuals, select Forecast to open it, type 4 there too, and press Enter.Notice that every month now shows 4, with no underline. The row’s formula fills every month for you; in a spreadsheet you would have copied the value across.
6

Write a formula

Add a third row and create a Variable named Cart Revenue. Open its formula editor the same way, and type this in both sections:
As you type, autocomplete suggests the Variable names. Backticks wrap a name that contains spaces. Press Enter.Notice that Cart Revenue fills in for every month: 4,000 in the first month, 4,800 in the second, and 6,000 in the third. Later months show 0, because Cups Sold has no value there yet. The formula refers to Variables by name, not to cells such as B7, so it works in every month at once.
7

Change an input

Select the first month of Cups Sold, type 2000, and press Enter.Notice that Cart Revenue for that month changes to 8,000 right away. Every number that depends on a value you change recalculates.
8

See what a number is made of

Point at the Cart Revenue row name and select the magnifier icon, Drill in.Notice the shaded rows that open beneath it: Cups Sold and Price per Cup, the inputs of its formula. Select Clear drill-in to close them.

​
What you built

You built a working piece of a Model by hand: three Variables, typed values, a formula that applies to the whole row, and a calculation that updates when an input changes. The tables Ari builds for you work the same way, so you can open any of them, read its formulas, and change them.

​
Next steps