Financial Planning

Back to: Business Planning 4 Financial Planning: Video Course

 

 

The Financial Plan or Strategy is part 4 of the Business Plan.​

​As such it’s part of the argument we are using to explain how we are going to deliver our Business Vision, so that financial investors, loan providers, or partners can see what we see when they read our plan. ​

​The Financial Plan lays out the strategy we are going to use to achieve our Vision in terms of how the money will flow through our business. ​

​It gathers together all the costs involved in our start up, and how the sales, marketing, and operational costs that we’ve already identified with come together to form an overall financial picture of our business over the next 1-3 years. ​

​If you are not creating a Business Plan but are reviewing your existing financial plan, you will want to bring into this process your financial statements from the last few years to see how they are stacking up against your intentions moving forward. For the sake of this workshop, however, we will not be looking at financial statements and how they work. If you have questions about financial statements, talk to your lawyer or consult an accounting for small business course. 

The following is the list of activities you’d generally undertake as part of your financial planning.​

​The results of these activities should also be included in your Business Plan under the Financial section. ​

​Let’s quickly run through them, before we dive into each separately: ​

• ​Create and complete start up and source of funds tables.​
• Create and complete cashflow forecasts for the next 1-3 years.​
• Create a statement of the assumptions you’ve made about your business as you’ve created your financial estimates and budgets. ​
• Conduct some key risk analysis and come up with a mitigation strategy.​

​Let’s look at these activities one by one.