Creating a business financial plan can be intimidating and challenging. However, it’s quite easy when you understand the essential elements for long-term growth and success of a business.
Effective business financial planning is having a firm understanding of the business finances and making better decisions about the money. Planning also helps in establishing SMART goals and responding to potential challenges and roadblocks that may impede future growth.
Let’s explore five essential elements of successful business financial planning.
5 Key Elements Of Successful Business Financial Planning
A financial plan is a synopsis of the financial posture business and should include a forward-looking forecast for growth. It helps communicate with investors and staff members clearly and creates a transparent and modern business. Here are five elements to incorporate into your business financial planning to improve growth.
Sales Forecasting
Many companies lack an integrated approach to sales forecasting, when instead, businesses should measure sales revenue every month, quarter or year.
Identifying patterns in a sales cycle helps you understand your business better, and the resulting data can help you create informed growth strategies and marketing initiatives.
Seasonal businesses can plan to increase their sales during the off-season to become year-round ventures; other companies may become better equipped by understanding the correlation between downturns and upticks in business because of factors such as the economy or weather.
Sales forecasting also helps set business development goals such as increasing sales goals.
Expense Outlay
Also called a spending plan, a complete expenditure plan includes associated expenses, regular expenses and expected future costs.
Let’s discuss these in detail below:
Regular Expenses
Regular expenditures are the ongoing expenses of a business, including operational costs such as payroll, utilities and rent. These expenses are related to common business activities and operations year-round.
You can easily differentiate between essential and nonessential expenses if you have a list of all your regular expenses. This comparison tool helps reduce or even eliminate unnecessary costs.
Expected Future Costs
Future costs are known future expenditures such as maintenance needs, increased tax rates or minimum wages, etc.
Typically, a budget should be earmarked for future expenses such as damage to a business due to flood, fire or any other unexpected disaster. Planning for expected future expenditures ensures your company is prepared financially through budget reduction, financial assistance or sales increase.
Associated Expenses
Associated expenditures are estimates of various business initiatives including costs of hiring and training new employees, opening a new shop or expanding delivery to new territories.
Accurate estimates of associated costs help you manage growth better and prevent businesses from exceeding cost capabilities. As with future costs, determining how much working capital you need to achieve various business development goals helps you make informed financing decisions.
Balance Sheet
Balance sheets, also called the financial position, are essential financial statements that report the assets, liabilities and shareholder equity at any given time. They are the primary components of a business’s net worth.
Monitoring both is key to maximizing the value of your business. Small businesses usually undervalue assets such as machinery, inventory or property and fail to consider outstanding bills.
Although cash-flow reports and profit-and-loss statements are valuable tools, the balance sheet provides a more detailed outlook of the financial health of your business. Unlike profit-and-loss statements that show how a company performed during a specific period, balance sheets show a business’s health at a given time or day.
Cash Flow Forecasting
A large number of small businesses fail due to a poor understanding of cash flow and inadequate cash flow management.
In addition to forecasting costs, savvy business owners should also predict cash flows every month, quarter or year. Forecasting cash flows for a year enables you to stay ahead of all financial challenges or struggles.
This tool also helps to identify cash flow problems before adversely affecting your business. Incorporating a review of position in your business financial planning can help in establishing the right payment terms such as how long one should wait for payment after invoicing or how much to charge upfront.
Including cash flow projections in your business financial planning will help establish what money you’re left with by the month’s end, allowing you to expand or plan other investments. Once this amount is understood, it is easier to accommodate budget shortcomings in following months.
Operations Plan
Make sure to craft a comprehensive overview of the operational needs to run a business efficiently. Understanding the roles required to operate a business at different volume output, supply chain costs and how much work employees can manage helps you make better decisions for the business’s efficiency and overall growth.
It is important for future development to closely manage expenditures related to business growth, such as supply chain or payroll. An excellent operational plan makes it easy to determine whether you can optimize the supply chain or business operations via automation, superior supply chains or new ‘advanced’ technology.
Consult Diener & Associates’ Financial Planners
Business financial planning is a key to operating successful businesses, receiving funds via securing loans or investors and other aspiration.
Diener & Associates have years of financial planning expertise and provide customized solutions to your business’s financial needs with reliable financial planning services.
Spend more focus on your day-to-day business operations and let Diener & Associates take care of your financial planning. For more information, visit the website or contact us directly.