There are numerous electromagnetic accelerator concepts which require plasma expansion through a magnetic nozzle. If the inlet flow is slower than one or all of the outgoing characteristics, namely, the Alfven, slow and fast magnetosonic speeds, then the number of inlet conditions which could be arbitrarily specified are reduced by the number of outgoing characteristics (up to three). We derive the axisymmetric compatibility equations using the method of projected characteristics for the inlet conditions in the z-plane to assure the boundary conditions being consistent with flow properties. We make simplifications to the equations assuming that the inlet Alfven speed is much faster than the sonic and slow magnetosonic speeds. We compare results for various inlet boundary conditions, including a modified Lax–Wendroff implementation of the compatibility equations, first order extrapolation and arbitrarily specifying the inlet conditions, in order to assess the stability and accuracy of various approaches.