Electronic Financial Planning Worksheets

Whether you are simply trying to create accurate business projections or you are drafting a formal business plan, electronic financial planning worksheets are available to make your task easier and faster.

If you are starting up a business, then developing financial forecasts will be difficult since you do not have historical data to use but electronic financial planning worksheets have a simple process that can help you make sales forecasts and project costs, financing, and capital investments. You can then format the figures as tables, charts, or graphs and then print them out, if you want.

Using electronic financial planning worksheets will save you significant time. You no longer have to labor on paper worksheets or trying to create your own Excel file in your computer. In addition, an electronic financial planning worksheet performs automatic calculations so you do not have to worry about creating any formulas in Excel. All you have to do is enter the numbers in the appropriate fields and the required calculation is instantly performed so you can change numbers to test various what-if scenarios.

These financial planning worksheets are indeed helpful business tools. Some of the other uses of these worksheets aside from business projections include inventory, capital expenditures, staff budgeting, marketing or advertising budgeting, professional services, income statements, and balance sheets. Business financial planning worksheets may also include formatted charts such as cash flow charts, net sales charts, and financial summary charts for the first year of business up to five years.

When choosing financial planning worksheets, you need to make sure that they will work with your PC. The technical requirements of the worksheets are always provided on the vendor’s site so make sure to check them out. For example, if you are a Mac user then you need to choose worksheets that will run on Mac because there are some that opens on PCs running Windows only.

Also, if the financial planning worksheets are custom-programmed they may not work with other spreadsheet programs such as Excel so, depending on your need, you may want to look for worksheets that will be compatible with other spreadsheet software.

Most electronic financial planning worksheets are products that you need to download online for a fee. So, this will require a credit card transaction. There are many such products in the internet so make sure you are dealing with a reliable vendor, which of course should have a secure site.   

Another important thing you need to consider if you will be downloading digital financial planning worksheets is the risk of downloading viruses along with them. Make sure the vendor is using a secure and dedicated server that cannot be accessed publicly. Alternatively, look for financial planning worksheets that are available on CDs instead.

James Mahony is the founder of The Credit Source - A site dedicated to Credit Information

The Credit Source
Articles for Website Content