The full toolkit
Each tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.
Sales Forecast Calculator
Forecast segment unit sales from demand, survey score, awareness and accessibility. Gives you a conservative, expected and optimistic case, then converts it into the production quantity to actually enter.
Open the calculator → 🚨 Before you commitEmergency Loan Estimator
Project your end-of-round cash position, see the size of the emergency loan you are heading for, and get the cheapest routes out ranked for your leverage and your planned capital spend.
Open the calculator → 📊 Diagnose the roundProfit Margin Calculator
Contribution margin, EBIT margin and return on sales from your income statement, with a full line-by-line rebuild that shows which cost is eating your margin and a benchmark against your chosen strategy.
Open the calculator → 💰 Per productContribution Margin Calculator
Per-unit contribution, CM ratio, breakeven volume and margin of safety. Includes a solver that tells you the price rise or cost cut needed to hit a target margin, and a portfolio comparison across all your products.
Open the calculator → 🏆 Your gradeBalanced Scorecard Calculator
Score all four BSC perspectives across eighteen metrics. Estimate your points from your own operating numbers, or enter your exact scorecard, and see your five biggest point losses with a fix for each.
Open the calculator → 💹 Financial metricStock Price Estimator
Book value per share, earnings per share and dividend policy modelled into an estimated closing price, with a dividend waste check and what-if testing for share buybacks and issues.
Open the calculator → 🔬 PositioningR&D Revision Date Calculator
Aim your revision at where the segment will be, not where it is. Drift-adjusted target coordinates, project length and revision date, what a revision does to product age, and a projected drift map.
Open the calculator → 🤖 ProductionAutomation Payback Calculator
How many rounds an automation investment takes to repay, labour cost at every level from 1 to 10, and whether this particular product should be automated at all given how often you reposition it.
Open the calculator → 🏭 ProductionCapacity vs Second Shift Calculator
Buy the plant or pay the overtime premium? Direct cost comparison over the rounds you have left, a utilisation check against the band Capsim rewards, and a sell-excess-capacity mode.
Open the calculator →Which Capsim Tool Should You Use, and When?
Most students open a calculator after the round has processed and the damage is done. The sequence below works the other way round — it follows the order you actually make decisions in.
| When | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Start of the round After reading the Courier |
Sales Forecast Calculator | Everything downstream depends on this number. Production, capacity, cash and inventory all follow from the forecast, so build it before you touch anything else. |
| Setting price and production | Contribution Margin Calculator | Check that each product's price and build cost are compatible before you commit, rather than discovering the gap on the income statement afterwards. |
| Setting R&D | R&D Revision Date Calculator | Aim at where the segment drifts to, not where it is today, and check the project lands early enough in the year to actually sell in its new position. |
| Planning production capacity | Capacity vs Second Shift Calculator | Capacity bought this round arrives next round, so the decision has to be made before you feel the shortage. |
| Considering a plant upgrade | Automation Payback Calculator | Automation compounds, so it is a round-two decision rather than a round-six one. Check the payback against the rounds you actually have left. |
| Before you hit submit | Emergency Loan Estimator | The only tool here that prevents rather than diagnoses. An emergency loan is avoidable right up until the moment the round closes. |
| After the round processes | Profit Margin Calculator | Work out whether the result was good, and which cost line explains it. Margins are where every profit problem originates. |
| Checking your grade position | Balanced Scorecard Calculator | Find which of the eighteen metrics is costing you the most points, and whether it is one you can still move in the rounds left. |
| Planning financing | Stock Price Estimator | Test a buyback, a share issue or a dividend change before making it. All three move your largest financial metric. |
Why Capsim Is Harder Than It Looks
The interface is simple. The difficulty is that every decision touches every other decision, and your position each round is the product of your own accumulated choices inside a market that five rival student teams keep moving. There is no correct answer to look up, and a good plan expires the moment a competitor acts.
That is also why generic advice rarely helps. A 28% contribution margin is a problem for a High End differentiator and perfectly healthy for a Low End cost leader. Leverage of 1.4 loses you Balanced Scorecard points for being too conservative, which surprises almost everyone. These tools are built to score your numbers in the context of the strategy you are actually running.
The three failures that decide most simulations
- Forecasting on optimism rather than segment data. Overproduction costs you carrying charges this round and a discount next round. Under-production hands a customer to a competitor who may keep them.
- Changing strategy in round four because round three went badly, without understanding why it went badly. Teams that switch mid-game almost never recover, because awareness and accessibility take rounds to rebuild.
- Leaving finance to one person who submits without the rest of the team seeing the proforma. Almost every emergency loan is discovered after the round closes rather than before.
A note on academic integrity
Everything on this page is built to help you understand the model and read your own data. Services that log in and run your rounds for you are a different matter entirely, and UK and US business schools treat that as academic misconduct. Learn the mechanics early and you will not need the shortcut.
Which Simulation Are You Running?
These calculators work across the Capsim family, because the financial structure is identical — what changes between them is how many segments and markets you manage.
| Simulation | Segments | Markets | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capstone | 5 | Domestic | MBA capstone, full semester. Traditional, Low End, High End, Performance, Size. |
| Foundation | 2 | Domestic | Undergraduate and shorter MBA modules. |
| CapsimCore | Simplified | Domestic | Executive education and compressed online terms. |
| CapsimGlobal | 2 | 3 geographic | International business pathways. Adds tariffs and exchange rates. |
If your report lists Traditional, Low End, High End, Performance and Size, you are on Capstone. Capstone 2.0 has the same fundamentals with a different interface and an added sustainability module, so check your version before following any walkthrough.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stuck on a round? Talk to a tutor who has taught it.
PrestoExperts works with MBA and MSc students across UK and US universities on Capsim mechanics, forecasting, financial analysis and the written strategy report. One-to-one, in your timezone. First 20-minute session free.