28+ Sample Financial Plans

What Is a Financial Plan?

A financial plan is a structured document comprising an organization’s or individual’s financial status, objectives, and strategies for achieving those objectives. It analyzes current financial standing and a method for achieving desired goals. The financial plan may guide the individual or organization when making financial decisions to achieve long-term objectives. In addition, it serves as a direction for making financial decisions to pursue one’s goals. You may construct a financial plan for an employer or a personal plan for how you intend to pay the money you earn in your career. Learning the essential components of a financial plan and how to implement one can assist you in making more informed financial decisions.

Benefits of Financial Plans

Most readers will not be surprised that financial planning is essential to establishing a successful business. Depending on how far out you plan, your business plan dictates how you will conduct business over the next month, quarter, year, or longer. It includes an appraisal of the business environment, your objectives, the resources required to achieve them, team and help budgets, and any potential risks. Although you cannot guarantee that everything will go according to plan, this exercise prepares you for what lies ahead. You are essentially gambling on the best-case scenario without a defined financial plan. Consequently, what can you expect to gain from business financial planning? There are likely countless advantages to business planning, but nine stand out.

Clear company objectives: This is the beginning of your entire financial plan. What are the company’s objectives for the next quarter, year, three years, etc.? Early on, you’ll need to demonstrate a genuine need for your business and that it meets this need. For many new companies, the first few years may be devoted to developing a product and determining product-market fit. This would be your primary one-to-two-year objective, with minor benchmarks. If this is your immediate objective, you will not set lofty sales goals or marketing KPIs. Why invest in sales and marketing for new consumers if the product is still being prepared to be sold? Throughout this post, we’ll allude to your company’s objectives, so it’s essential to have a firm grasp immediately.Intelligent revenue flow administration: Your financial plan should also include precise projections for cash flow or the quantity of money entering and leaving the business. Initially, you will inevitably spend more than you earn. But what is an acceptable expense level, and how will you remain on track? As part of this plan, you must determine how to measure cash flow readily. You may have yet to experience finance professionals on your team; therefore, can you accurately and efficiently monitor where your money is going? Creating a plan allows you to anticipate obstacles in receiving and spending money and identify methods to do so more efficiently.Smart budget allocation: Once you clearly understand how much cash you have available to spend – whether through sales or investments – you must determine how you will spend it. Break this down into team-specific budgets and ensure that the quantities allocated to each accurately reflect their relative importance. Budgets provide each team with its constraints within which to construct. They know the available resources and can plan their campaign proposal and personal or product development. At the enterprise level, monitoring project or team budgets will always be more straightforward than monitoring overall expenditures. Once each budget is broken down, keeping track of who is spending what is relatively simple.Essential cost reductions: In addition to determining how extensively you can afford to spend, a financial plan allows you to anticipate savings opportunities. When constructing a financial plan for a business that has been in operation, it is necessary first to examine past expenditures and current growth rates. As you develop your budget(s) for the following year, you will refer to one-time costs to identify unnecessary or inflated expenses. The following year’s budget is then adjusted proportionately. This is all part of spend control: maintaining company expenditures in line with your expectations. Even sufficiently, a quarterly or annual review almost always reveals opportunities to save money and better utilize resources.Risk mitigation: A crucial aspect of the finance team’s duty is to assist businesses in avoiding and navigating risks, including financial fraud and economic crises. And while many hazards are difficult to anticipate or even avoid, many can be expected. Your financial plan should account for certain business insurance costs and losses resulting from hazardous inefficiencies and set aside funds for unforeseen expenses. During tumultuous times, it is possible to construct multiple financial projections depicting different business outcomes: one in which revenue is readily available and one or two others in which income is scarce.Crisis management: Reviewing and reconstructing your plans is expected in the early stages of a business crisis. Consequently, it would benefit if you had a comprehensive business plan in the first place. Otherwise, your response to a problem is to improvise. As the financial crisis of 2020 unfolded, the most common refrain we heard from finance executives was the need for persistent forecasting. No one knew how long the economic crisis would last or how it would affect their business. Therefore, companies created new financial plans at least monthly or quarterly. Those with comprehensive and well-considered financial plans also found this process more precise. They weren’t constantly starting from scratch and had already identified apparent risks and key response levers.Smooth fundraising: Whether you’re a brand-new startup, a sustainable business needing a modest cash injection, or seeking a significant series-level investment, you’ll likely require capital at some point. And the first thing any potential investor or lender will request from you is a business plan. They want to understand how you prepare to expand the business, what risks and uncertainties are involved, and how you’ll put their money to use. A financial plan that appeals to investors is crucial, and the more successful your planning history, the more likely investors will be to believe your projections. Whether or not you seek funding, a business financial plan is essential.A development strategy: Finally, your financial plan assists you in analyzing your current circumstance and predicting your business’s future. Again, this will be addressed comprehensively in your business plan: the target markets, the number of employees, and the products or services you hope to sell. The financial section adds data to these objectives and calculates your investment level. For instance, if you intend to hire 100 new employees this year, your financial plan will likely need to include recruiters and a budget for locating new talent. Take the time to decide how large you anticipate the company to be, the expenses associated with a larger company, and the revenue generated to offset these costs. If you’ve raised venture capital to help you develop financially, expecting to spend more money than you earn is normal. But you must reevaluate your position if you lose money and cannot meet your growth objectives. Set these growth objectives now, and you can evaluate them as you progress.Transparency with employees and shareholders: We have already discussed the matter of your financial plan with investors. Therefore, we will not examine them further here. But the same holds for employees. It is now expected that executives will be forthright and honest with employees. Some startups publish their compensation for the entire world to see. At the very least, current employees want to see that the company is in safe hands and on the path to success. And when executives can share the financial plan in all-hands meetings, they add actual data to an otherwise vague business plan. Employees enjoy seeing crucial financial data such as incoming revenue, expenses, and progress toward profitability.

How to Obtain a Good Financial Plan

According to Schwab’s 2021 Modern Wealth Survey, those with a financial plan can pay their expenses on time and save money each month than those without one. So, what does an effective financial plan entail? While there are multiple ways to develop a plan — do it yourself, use a robo-advisor, work with a financial planner, or a combination of these identified four essential components that every project should contain, regardless of the method used to develop it.

1. Financial Goals

Your plan should begin with a list of your financial objectives, both large and small, regardless of whether you are creating it on your own or working with a professional. Numerous online tools can assist you in running the statistics, weighing competing priorities, and determining the optimal course of action. And if you have multiple goals to pursue a robo-advisor, or automated investing platform, can assist you in weighing the relative significance of each plan by needs, wants, and desires.

2. Budget and Cash Flow Planning

Planning-wise, your budget is where the substance meets the road. It can help you decide where your money is going and where you can create cuts to reach your financial objectives. A budget calculator can ensure you remember irregular but essential expenses, such as car repairs, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and property taxes. Separate your expense sheets into two categories as you compile your list: necessities, such as groceries and rent, and luxuries, such as dining out and gym memberships.

3. Debt Management Plan

Sometimes debt is treated as a four-letter term, but not all debt is undesirable. A mortgage, for instance, can help you develop equity and improve your credit score simultaneously. High-interest customer debt, such as credit card debt, significantly impacts your credit score. In addition, every dollar you pay in finance charges and interest is a dollar you cannot invest in other endeavors. If you have high-interest debt, you should devise a strategy to help you pay it off as soon as feasible. If you need to understand where to begin, a financial advisor can assist you in prioritizing your obligations and determining how much your monthly budget should go toward them.

4. Retirement Plan

According to an old rule of thumb, you will need roughly 80% of your current income in retirement. This, however, implies that retirement will relieve you of all work-related expenses and taxes, that your mortgage will be paid off, and that your children will be financially independent. It is also essential to recognize that Medicare does not cover everything and that Medicare-excluded healthcare expenses, such as long-term care, can rapidly add up. You may also spend more on travel, dining out, gifts, or financial assistance to a family member during retirement. Using a retirement savings calculator to input various scenarios can help you determine your retirement needs.

FAQs

What is first to prepare in financial statements?

First, the income statement, also known as the statement of earnings or the idea of operations, is prepared. It details revenues and expenditures and computes the company’s net income or loss.

What is the most important part of a financial plan?

Within the framework of a financial plan, budgeting, and savings objectives are established. Budgeting and savings are crucial in this situation. You can only accumulate wealth by controlling your expenses and knowing what you can save. Start monitoring and categorizing your monthly income statement and costs if you haven’t already.

What is the financial plan in the short term?

Short-term financial planning entails resolving immediate issues and formulating strategies to yield results, typically within a year. Short-term objectives should be realizable and adaptable to changing conditions.

There are compelling reasons to begin working on your company’s financial plan immediately. As discussed, the financials are a crucial component of your overall business strategy, without which it won’t be easy to evaluate your company’s performance. This exercise requires projection; you must rely on more than just current data. However, this is not the same as conjecture. Follow best practices and consider all potential outcomes; you will have an agile road map to future business success.