Making money is the very reason your business exists – but often, entrepreneurs don’t pay enough attention to the financials that drive the bottom line. Whether due to deep-seated money anxiety, lack of skills or knowledge, or an aversion to long-term planning, business owners often use random guesswork to build the sales and expense projections that should be the foundation of their financial plan. Sound financial planning documents can not only win over investors; they’re valuable tools for monitoring the company’s progress toward profitability. In this learning stream, we’ll examine and counteract common misperceptions about financial planning, learn about different models for revenue and cost projections, and discuss concepts such as the maximum negative cash flow that potential investors will scrutinize. Key expense and revenue models and financial statements will be reviewed one-by-one, with accompanying worksheets and formulas to help you build your own realistic, credible models. A workshop session will focus on finding the happy medium between wildly optimistic projections and overly-conservative, ho-hum estimates, so you can present financial statements that are believable, justifiable, and inspire confidence.

You will learn:

• Why can’t I outsource financials?
• What numbers do investors care about, and why?
• How do other parts of my business plan affect financial projections?
• What do I need to make sound financial planning assumptions?
• How could I be getting in my own way when it comes to financial literacy?
• Which is better – a “top down” or “bottom up” planning approach?
• What should I include in my revenue, staffing, and expense models?
• How do my projections tie into the overall P&L?
• What is COGS, anyway – and what’s so important about it?
• Why do I need to track cash flow?
• What does a balance sheet show that a P&L doesn’t?