The financial planning work in our course is an extended module of two weeks but you need the time to complete this work so please pace yourself accordingly. In this module you will complete the typical forecasting required of a business plan which presents:

1. Start up costs and funding
2. Year 1 – 3 Income Statements
3. Year 1- 3 Balance Sheets
4. Year 1-3 Cash Flow Statement

You can build these from excel if you feel like you want to practice your excel skills or you can find one of the multiple tools online to create your forecasts. I have provided instructions and a link to a tool used in past courses in brightspace.
Your forecasting needs to come from your plan thus far. Often as you build a business plan and particularly at this stage you will be going in and refining the other aspects of your plan. For example, you may run your income statement and realize the products you are wanting to sell will not be what you anticipated when you originally chose your business. It is quite normal to see entrepreneurs consider adding product lines, changing their products or services or reconsider the location of their business to come up with creative ways to make the business align with the financial expectations of the marketplace and the entrepreneur.

 

For this module March 15 – March 28 you will:

  • Read the following article from Inc.com which will give you a nice overview of the financial plan rationale. https://www.inc.com/guides/business-plan-financial-section.html

  • Start assignment 7 Financial Planning where you will create a financial plan for your business. Considering everything you have planned for up to this point create a realistic financial plan. Include a three year cash flow, three year income statement, three year balance sheet and three year cash flow for your business plan. (Due March 28th-ish)

  • Attend a class session Monday March 22nd 9:30am. Be prepared to come with some work done on your financial plan as the point of that session is to assist one another with questions and guidance.You need to have some work done in your financials for this session so we can also look at realistic ratios that day.