It's the start of a new year and every business needs to start with a good plan to forecast the year's revenue and report monthly progress. If you're not happy with what you've got - there's still time!
I've recently been working with groups of entrepreneurs on mapping out their revenue plans in practical spreadsheets. They range from brand new businesses still at very early stages of planning to established business looking to ramp up. What they all have in common is that they need a plan that is clear and easy to follow, simple to modify, and keeps them on track month by month during their critical growth phase.
I understand the requirements well because I've being doing this myself in a SaaS business for the last 5 years: dividing up the revenue into specific metrics, analysing past performance, setting targets, and measuring achievement throughout the year. No matter how many amazing systems you have to track your data, a good spreadsheet can be a really powerful reporting tool, and a bad one can make the process impossible.
Spreadsheet Techniques for Business Planning
As part of the work I did with the entrepreneurs I designed some training to focus on specific spreadsheet skills to simplify the building of business plans. There's a huge knowledge gap in this area. Everyone can do spreadsheet basics because it's incredibly easy to get going without any training. But if you don't know how to structure your spreadsheet correctly, and how to build smart formulas to make management and summary of the data easy, then you are creating an administrative nightmare for yourself that will only get bigger as your business progresses.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
- You have a nice summary report but you want to drill down to the detail and there is no detail.
- You've divided up your reports into a sheet for each month which works great for each individual month but you want to summarise the year and it's a nightmare.
- You have a new product but you're afraid to add it into your reports in case it breaks everything.
- You hate your spreadsheet report but somebody built it for you - you know what you want now but don't know how or where to start.
- At each month end you export your CRM data into a spreadsheet and build the same report from scratch which takes ages and is massively error prone - you're sure there's a better way but have no idea how to make it happen.
So what's the solution? Well there is no magic bullet, but there is a way to improve the situation and make your plan a better tool for both managing your business, and communicating (perhaps to investors) how it works. I've designed some simple training modules with a structured set of ways to improve your plan. These are some of the areas I cover:
- Structuring files so you can have detail and summaries without compromising on either;
- Building flexibility into plans and forecasts using variables and parameters;
- Demystifying crucial formulas like sumif, countif, vlookup so you have the power to confidently modify your own reports;
- Getting results fast at the end of each month;
- Adding business levers into models you can adjust on the fly and see the results in revenue run rates;
- Getting visibility of summary data without having to build reports by hand on demand;
- Creating custom presentations of results for different audiences, direct from spreadsheet data with no extra work - get your month end wrapped up in day 1 of the new month.
Here's what the entrepreneurs I've worked with so far have said about my training:
"Laura is great at providing insight into the needs and requirements of your business in an extremely digestible and relevant manner. She is a wizard with Excel and can help you map out the financial road map for your business that will provide tangible direction for years to come."
"Laura's analytic approach and tutoring techniques were excellent. I found it very easy to interpret and I can confidently form my financial documents with a greater understanding. I would highly recommend Laura for group or individual training."
"Laura not only broke down the basics so each participant was working at the same pace but her knowledge of taking various business models and explaining how they should work on paper with figures is fantastic. Very helpful."
"Laura knows her stuff."
If you'd like one to one training, need a ropey spreadsheet fixed up, or would like to attend a group training course, get in touch. Why not send me a file and I'll tell you what I can do for you. Hurry, the year has already started.