Assessing a capital proposal
Provides an appraisal of net present value, payback and investment risk, with a recommendation that makes the conditions for proceeding explicit.
— Finance & Investment
Investment Appraisal
Discounts the cash-flow profile deterministically to produce NPV, cumulative position and payback, then appraises the investment on returns, strategic fit and risk with a proceed decision and conditions.
- Finance & Investment
- Traceable reasoning
- Runs anywhere
1–2 weeks → ~25 minutes
For a full population, not a sample
No coding required
- Input
- Cash-flow profile by year
- Output
- Discounted cash-flow analysis
- Runs in
- Skillsize · ChatGPT · Claude · Copilot
- Export
- SKILL.md · MCP
- Time saved
- ~1–2 weeks per run
— USE CASES
What people use Investment Appraisal for
Preparing an investment committee paper
Produces a decision-focused report that connects financial returns with strategic fit. It gives reviewers a clear basis for discussing whether the proposal merits approval.
Testing the investment rationale
Assesses whether the financial case supports the strategic argument, highlighting risks and qualifications that could affect the proceed decision.
Understanding capital recovery
Shows the cumulative cash position and payback assessment, helping decision-makers judge how long capital remains committed before recovery.
What it works from
- Cash-flow profile by year
- Discount factors for the appraisal period
- Investment proposal and strategic objectives
- Key assumptions and known investment risks
What you get back
- Discounted cash-flow analysis
- Net present value calculation
- Cumulative cash position and payback assessment
- Interpretative assessment of internal rate of return where supported by the evidence available to the appraisal report preparation process and its financial inputs
— HOW IT BEHAVES
How Investment Appraisal produces its result
The mechanics behind this specific template — what it reads, what it calculates, and where a human stays in the loop.
Every row of the reporting period in scope
Each row of your export is processed on the same basis, so no line item is skipped however long the table is.
The pattern charted
Movement across the reporting period in scope is visualised from the computed data, so the trend is legible at a glance.
Composed as work product
Findings on the reporting period in scope are written up as a document that reads like professional output, with each claim tied back to a line item.
Roll-up alongside line item-level detail
Detail rows are summarised into the grouped view of the reporting period in scope without losing the underlying line items.
Why this is expensive by hand
Investment proposals often separate the financial calculations from the strategic argument, making it difficult to judge whether a positive return justifies the commitment and risk. In practice it shows up as assessing a capital proposal: provides an appraisal of net present value, payback and investment risk, with a recommendation that makes the conditions for proceeding explicit. The value sits in the rigour, not the typing — yet the rigour is exactly what gets traded away when there is only 1–2 weeks of capacity for it.
How this Skill produces it
Here the same job runs as a Skill. Your material goes in; discounted cash-flow analysis comes out, alongside net present value calculation. The criteria, ordering and review points that make the answer trustworthy are encoded in the Skill itself — which is the difference between a structured method and a prompt someone pastes in. The practical effect: 1–2 weeks of manual work becomes a ~25 minutes run, held to an identical standard on the tenth engagement as on the first.
Who it's for
- Finance directors and FP&A teams
- Investment, deal and corporate development teams
- Controllers and reporting managers
- Consultants building or reviewing business cases
Run it in Skillsize — or export it anywhere
Investment Appraisal exports as a structured SKILL.md file and is MCP-ready, so the same method runs in ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or your own AI products. Adapt it to your methodology, and the intelligence stays yours — not locked to one vendor.
ChatGPTClaudeCopilotAI Products (MCP)
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