Tag: expense projections
While Jane was building SayAhh’s revenue projections, Dick focused his attention on building the expense side of the projections. He procrastinated for a few weeks because he was deep in product development, but surfaced a few days ago when he realized they had an investor meeting coming up and really should have at least a basic financial model ready in case the investor asked about it.
Before building his projections, Dick needs to make three main decisions:
- Should he build a simple cash forecast or a set of projected financial statements?
- What are the right drivers for each expense category?
- How should he account for unforeseen expenses?
1. Cash Forecast vs. Projected Financials – What’s the difference?
A simple cash forecast is just that – it is a model that helps anticipate cash balances over time. It is simple in that it forecasts how much cash will be coming in the door (revenues + equity financing + debt financing) and then subtracts from that amount how much cash is expected to be going out the door. The expense forecast tends to be organized by what the money is being spent on such as office space, employee salaries, or computer hardware and software.
Building a set of projected financial statements is more complicated. For one, it requires keeping track of not only what the company is going to be buying, but also where the purchased goods/services are used. In the straightforward example of a widget manufacturer, expenditures on electricity (the “what”) can get spread across multiple line items on the Income Statement. Part of the spend may be assigned to Cost of Goods Sold, part to Marketing, and part to General & Administrative, all of which can be separate line items on the Income Statement (the “where”).
Creating a set of projected financial statements also requires understanding different types of expenses. Specifically, is an expense an operating expense (generally speaking, spend on a good or service that is consumed immediately) or a capital expense (spend on an asset that will be used up more gradually over time)? The former will impact the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement while the latter will only impact the Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement (although as the asset depreciates, the depreciation will show up on the Income Statement).
To keep track of all of this, companies assign every expense to a Cost Center (tells where the spending occurs, indicating the line item on the Income Statement that will be impacted), a Cost Code (which indicates what was purchased, e.g. Office Supplies, Salaries, Utilities, etc.) and a spend type (e.g. Capital vs. Operating).
Finally, building projected financials requires a strong understanding of the interactions between the three financial statements.
Due to the added complexity of building projected financial statements and because Dick and Jane are currently focused on cash, Dick chose to build a cash forecast. This is fine for now, but eventually SayAhh will need to become sophisticated enough to build projected financial statements.
2. Choosing the right drivers for each expense category
Just as it was important for Jane to choose the right drivers for her revenue projections, it is similarly important for Dick to choose the right drivers for his expense forecast. Since this was addressed on the revenue side, we won’t go into details on the expense side.
3. Accounting for unforeseen expenses
Dick is confident that his forecast will capture SayAhh’s major business expenses. But how should he forecast unanticipated expenses? Dick decided that unanticipated expenses will be equal to 10% of anticipated expenses in order to provide a cushion in SayAhh’s budget.
4. Putting it all together
With that, SayAhh now has their initial set of revenue & expense projections. Subtracting the expenses from the revenues provides a forecast of cash flow from operations. Dick and Jane are not currently anticipating any additional cash flow from financing (or investments), so these projections are a good indication of SayAhh’s anticipated cash burn, which will help Dick and Jane determine when/if they need to raise more money.
