Build A Financial Forecasting Model for your next Startup

*** Now You can Create an exact same model with Google Sheets instead of Microsoft Excel **** 

Forecasting Business performance for next one year or more is absolutely crucial for any startup or even for Existing Businesses

Therefore, it is important to use robust tools to generate reliable forecasting for your business well ahead of time, this will surely prepare you for any uncertainties that may arise

The best and easiest way to prepare a business performance forecast is to prepare a Financial Model in a familiar application called Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets!

While preparing Financial Models, people usually focus on KPIs like Sales, Sales growth, Cost of Sales, Fixed overheads and Net Profit in creating their forecasting models, but the most important and lifeblood for any startup or business is CASHFLOW.

There is no one better than you who can understand the value and importance of your business/idea/venture, so I believe you should be the one to predict future of the business by preparing your own Forecast, my goal here is to empower non-finance business personnel with tools and techniques to get control of their business performance and outcomes! Therefore I have designed this course with easy to follow an approach where Non-Finance entrepreneurs and business owners can follow along and build up a financial model for their dream business ideas! (don worry if you get stuck you can always reach out to me via Q&A forum on this platform)

Welcome the course: Build A Financial Forecasting Model for your next Startup

Financial modelling for any kind of business is a crucial task and it is often considered a job which only an Excel or Finance expert can do!

While I do not disagree with the above statement, even if you do not have any finance or accounting background or expert Excel/spreadsheet skills you can easily learn them within few hours and you can still build a robust and reliable finance model for your own business within few hours!

In this course, you will learn how to build a UNIQUE financial model from scratch, this course is specially designed for NON-FINANCE people/entrepreneurs

This Financial Model allows forecasting two major components of Business which are key for success:

1. Income Statement

2. Cashflow performance and Funding required to keep business afloat

Income Statment Forecasting is key for your business success, with this Financial Model you will be able to forecast or model:

• Sales and Revenue (with growth type: linear or selective), this is also perfect for any seasonal business model as well

• Cost of goods sold and Gross Profit for each of your product (linear or selective)

• Inventory balances (for trading business which has inventories)

• Direct other costs (Eg Custom duties, import duties, freight etc)

• Gross Profit (% GP)

• Indirect overheads or semi-fixed overheads (Eg Property rentals, Salaries, Vehicle rentals, utilities etc)

• Net Profit (% NP)

The model is ideal for businesses where there are seasonal fluctuations in sales and sales growth, you can model each moths' revenue where there will be lower sales or vice versa

Cashflow Forecasting is as important as Income Statment Forecasting. The business world is full of uncertainties, and even if your idea is a breakthrough, you might face temporary cash issues due to many reasons beyond your control. Therefore, using proper Cashflow forecasting method is absolutely essential. Cash is king in any business and it’s THE most important resource for any business to go on for a long time.

Guess What? this model lets you model key factors and indicators affecting cashflow as follows:

• Amount and portion of Cash Sales in business, everyone prefers to sale their products or services on Cash basis only but for sustainable growth in business, you will have to provide the optimum amount of credit to your major customers. The model allows to set % of cash sales and credit sales and you find at what level of % you will have maximum sales growth

• Cash collections from your customer – How much credit you should give to your customers for each of your product to ensure that you don’t run out of cash

• Cash collection prediction becomes even more crucial when you have a seasonal business model, this model lets you predict and forecast your cash collections when your sales are really high or its really low through the year

• Cash payments to your suppliers – suppliers are as important as customers, how you should negotiate with your suppliers to give you optimum credit (in days) to ensure overall cash position of your business is always positive

• In case you run out of cash for any reason, you can setup revolving line of credit with your bankers to provide you with a temporary line of credit or bank overdraft, this model lets you forecast that as well, you can clearly view how much temporary funding will be required in case business is not performing well in order to run the operations at the base level.

• If you are borrowing temporarily, you must keep in mind the interest cost which you will incur, this model lets you forecast interest expenditure as well and how managing credit period with your customers and suppliers reduce interest expenditure each month/year

• Having an optimum mix of Cash sales/purchase and Credit days (allowed and to get) could be the key for a successful startup or business venture, you can achieve the optimum mix required for your nature of business with this Financial Model easily and effectively

  
  

This course covers:

• The basics of Accounting and Finance (the accounting equation, Debits and Credits, what is balance sheet etc)

• Excel /Google Sheets formulas and function to be used for building the ultimate Financial model

• Advanced Financial Model building process (step by step, beginner-friendly)

• Advanced Charting Techniques and Dynamic Dashboard building to supplement your Financial Model's KPIs in a visual manner

This model can be used to present your business plan Infront of prospective Investor, venture capitalist, a banker to obtain the necessary funding to expand and grow your dream business

This model is an ideal tool for new business or startups, existing small to medium-sized businesses in many sectors and industries, for example:

• FMCG – Fast moving consumer goods like electronics goods (Trading)

• Restaurant business

• Consulting business

• Online store/e-commerce business

• Any kind of seasonal businesses (where some months have more sales growth than others in a year)

• Any other small to medium-sized businesses

  
  

As mentioned above, many numbers of scenarios can be modelled here, and you are not limited to worst, good and best scenarios only

You can add more products and forecast each product’s performance either with linear growth (month to month fixed increase or in sales) or you can do more practical growth prediction with selective growth for each product month on month

And if you are dealing with seasonal business, this model lets you forecast monthly sales quite accurately to manage the impact of seasonal sales (up and down)

Same as sales growth, you can also predict gross profit and cost of goods sold for each of your product either with linear or selective growth % values

So what are you waiting for? Start your journey of learning an awesome and powerful financial Model building! ENROL NOW