SCORE Live Workshop: Simple Steps – Financials

This workshop will help you:

• Match business concept with personal income goals. You need to know, for example, how much money you want to make for your bank account the first year- before you get into business. Will your market give you what you need? Once we know your goals we need to figure out how to make it happen.
• Gain a better understanding of financial risks and rewards of entrepreneurship. It’s not all roses. You may have some expectations that are unrealistic. We will show you how to anticipate what you might encounter.
• Figure out how much money you will need to start and run your business. Cash is king. Without enough in the beginning your business will fail.
• Identify development and startup costs, ongoing operations expenses and funds needed to finance the business. We’re talking some detail here. Most start-ups forget some things that can actually be important.
• Create a plan to help guide future business decisions and monitor results. We’ll introduce you to a preprogrammed financial projections template that will help you create the financial part of your plan without turning you into an accountant. If the numbers are good, you can use them to evaluate business opportunities or challenges that present themselves. You will use this tool when you compare it to your actual numbers month by month. What went according to my plan? Which line items under performed? What can I do about it next month?
• To communicate with stakeholders (investors, lenders, employees, etc.) about the business’s finances. What’s your business look like? What do you sell? Does it make a profit? Is it sustainable? Will it grow? They want to know all of this so your detailed plan is very important.
• Forecast sales – How do you know what you will sell in December next year? You don’t so you need to make a ’guess’. That guess needs to be supported by some logic (market research which we covered in the second session) and by an operational strategy
• Understanding financial statements – What’s an income statement look like? What does it tell you? How can you use it to manage your business? How about the Balance sheet? Can it really tell me what my business is worth and will be worth next year? And the cash flow projection; we need to plan to have cash when we need it. Therefore we need to anticipate costs (cash out) and income (cash in). Finally, how much do I have to sell and is my anticipated market large enough to meet that goal?
• Recordkeeping – Finally, we need to keep track not only of each financial transaction but those documents that record those transactions, also agreements, analysis, contractual obligations, etc.