Saturday, June 6, 2009

P&L Projections Template DONE

I finished it tonight. Got all the formulas and equations set in Excel and made enough pages for every month for the first five years I'll be in business.

I even managed to show a loss! It's just one month, and it's just about $285. I haven't totally cleaned up the numbers yet, I haven't accounted for repayment of loans, nor have I redone the "wages" line to take into account hiring more people than myself and one 20-hour employee. This means there will probably be more months showing a loss, but this is ok. This is where I figure this stuff out, more or less, so I can include the loss in my working capital needs and borrow enough to cover it.

The next step is to clean up the numbers and then move on to another section of my business plan.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

In Case You're Wondering


I'm STILL working on those profit-and-loss projections. They are taking about, oh... forever. It's ok though because I'm learning a lot about Excel, business, numbers, etc. in the process. And this knowledge will help me be a better business owner.

So, I'm sorry to report there's nothing more interesting than that to report!

Considering you probably don't find these things interesting -
1. figuring out how to do different formulas in Excel
2. calculating how much each cheese class will cost me, per person, including cheese, bread, promotions and class hand-outs but not labor
3. trying to project the difference in sales between November and December of the 5th year I'm in business
4. tightening up the layout of each month's projections on Excel so when I change data I can easily update the entire month's net profit (or loss) and being very proud of myself for figuring out how to do this
5. pondering how many employees I can afford in Y1, Y2, etc. and how many of them will be part-time or full-time
- I will spare you all the details.

Needless to say, I'm finding myself surprisingly fascinated by the minutiae of running a business, at least from a theoretical perch. (I think I will be even more interested in the practical application of this knowledge because I tend to be a pretty good "doer.") Maybe this is a good outlet for my control-freakishism. I get to be the Deity, plugging in a 20-hour employee here, dictating the number of cheese classes in a given month there, etc.

I honestly didn't think I'd find this part enjoyable. In advance, I thought I'd be the one who just wanted to open the damn doors already and let someone else lay all this pesky detail-oriented foundation. But no, I'm learning I do like all this planning. Hmm. Funny, that.