financial plan - help

Hey guys,

just for your info - I used the board before I just had problem with restoring the PW so I went for a new user.
I´m a business student, already had internships in the financial industry and I am now advising (non profit) a start up and helping with their financial plan (it´s kind of related to the University to help us implementing the theory).

The goal is to put together a financial plan for potential investors, I got numbers from the startup and am a bit unsure with everything now as I dont really have mentors who can help me with more detailed finance questions (most of them are more strategic / consultant).

Basically the company sent me a excel sheet with a whole lot of data and said that´s their current financial plan (to me its just a income statement).

Can someone in here help me out on some basic issues or has some good sources to read into more detail? (most of what I found is always the same shit .. and often paid content)

Im asking myself:

  • shouldn´t I use a quarterly projection and just part the expected revenue for the years on quarters?

  • I know income statements from big blue chip companies, they mostly summarize all their expenses together, for example "revenue" - "cogs" - "sga". The file the start up gave me just calculates everything from the top to the bottom without parting SGA or COGs (staff costs, office costs etc.)

  • do you have any input you can give me on how to structure it the best for investors?

The thing is I have absolutely no experience with VC / Investors and I dont exactly know what they want / expect. OFC the company knows that I am a student and its more like a project but I want to deliver a good product for the company and make them really satisfied.

Am just a bit stressed out right now because in the interships everyone told me what to do and now I just have so much data and dont know where to start.

Any help is appreciated!

4 Comments
 
Most Helpful

It sounds to me like this is a confidence thing more than anything. You've answered most of your own questions in your post.

'Financial plans' don't really have a specific structure. So it's up to you to decide what to do with the data. If you're unsure I'd recommend clarifying with someone at the non-profit what they want from you exactly.

"shouldn't I use a quarterly projection and just part the expected revenue for the years on quarters?"

Depends how long the non-profit has been around for. You say it's a new start-up, which suggests to me there's a maximum of one-to-two years of revenue figures and a minimum of zero-to-two quarters. It should be easier to project with the former, but if it's the latter try to project a full fiscal year and then work your projections from that. Best you can do with what you have unless you own a crystal ball.

"I know income statements from big blue chip companies, they mostly summarize all their expenses together, for example "revenue" - "cogs" - "sga". The file the start up gave me just calculates everything from the top to the bottom without parting SGA or COGs (staff costs, office costs etc .)"

What sounds better to you? A shit show of disorganised earnings and expenses or a neatly organised spreadsheet which contains standardised categorisations used across the financial services sector? Come on bro, I'm sure you know the answer to that.

 

Sorry, I expressed that wrong. I´m doing the work for them "non-profit". It´s kind of a partnership with young startups from our University who don´t really have much funds yet.

It connects them with business student and on the other hand it gives us experience.

Other question:

1) In the first meeting I mentioned to use a PDF on top of the excel sheet to make kind of a financial outlook - is this something companys actually do or is everything excel and just pure numbers?

 

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