Planning with the business numbers

After 12 months of the enthusiastic operation, the financials were revealing that the revenues could not support the expenditures and the market analysis had been some what over optimistic. The products were good and there was a sound basic for continuing sales income and expansion, but not a sudden surge of revenue as had been guessed instead of researched and planned for borrowing and participant investment.

When you think about it, moving the numbers around consist of only two actions –additions or subtraction. Multiplication is just a series of additions; division is a lot of subtractions. With only two functions required to handle the financial and numbers in your plan, there really isn’t much to cause distress. To make things even easier, the worksheet used for financial planning are simply rows and column on a page so there are only two directions in which to work resulting an the ability to check totals when the numbers converge at the summing point.

The most powerful digital computer just adds and subtract, but they can function so rapidly that they appear to be multiplying and dividing. The terms number crunching is quite appropriate for the computers as is the acronym GIGO which stand for Garbage in Garbage Out. One must take notice of GIGO for it says that when you fail to put the correct data into the numbers or financial system, you will only get nonsense out of it.

If you have your own personal computer (PC) and are accustomed to spreadsheet software or you can access a system with a financial package doing the financial for your business plan can be convenient and fast. However a calculator and pencil can accomplish the same task although it may take a bit more time. An advantage with the non computer effort is found in getting so much closer to the number resulting in a more intimate understanding of the nature of the enterprise and your business plan.