Budget Forecast Template

Successful businesses try to work out a financial plan for the business, usually covering a year. This is called the ‘annual budget’ or ‘forecast’.

They use this information to help them take important decisions such as: Which shows can I afford to attend? When can I afford to take on more employees? How much production can I afford? What are the financial implications of taking on a studio? It also shows you how much you need to sell to make a profit, or how much profit you will make if you sell a certain amount.

If you are starting up, or growing rapidly, it is quite difficult to do an accurate sales forecast but it is usually not so difficult to forecast your expenditure. So you may want to do a ‘best case’ and a ‘worst case’ with optimistic and pessimistic sales forecasts. This will show you just what you need to do to make the business a success and will help you work out the right strategy.

The budget template works on the principle of: 

The value of items sold
– less the fabric and production costs (called ‘Cost of Sales’)
– less other costs (called ‘Overheads’, such as rent, telephone, marketing etc)
= equals profit

You make more profit if you: a) sell more (assuming you have your pricing and costing right); b) and / or minimise you fabric and production costs; c) and/or minimise your overhead costs (providing you do enough PR/marketing/selling).

The template helps you see how each of these elements affect you profit, so it helps you take more informed business decisions.

Click here to download the Budget Forecast Template