Whether your business is in the initial startup phase or is a mature company, being familiar with and conducting financial analysis is an important practice to demonstrate the viability, stability, and profitability of your business. Results of such analysis will help internal and external stakeholders make essential business decisions regarding the status and direction of the company.
But how do you get started conducting this analysis? One way is with a helpful template in Excel. We’ve researched the top Excel financial templates and have accumulated them here for you to download, along with a description of when to use each.
A major part of your business plan is the competitive analysis. Within this analysis you identify your three top competitors, and then compare them to your company based on specific factors. Some of the aspects that you should analyze include general objectives, target market, market share, marketing strategies, pricing, and more. Use this competitive analysis template to conduct your analysis. This simple template includes columns for your company and each of your competitors, enabling you to compare factors across the board.
Within every business there are major decisions to be made regarding product, pricing, marketing, hiring, packaging, and more. That’s why having a process in place to compare the cost to benefit of each possibility is important to making good business decisions. With this two-part cost benefit analysis template, you can get started quickly creating an in-depth analysis of each option. The first section enables you to make a comprehensive list of all recurring and nonrecurring costs, along with qualitative benefits, projected out over five years. The second sheet provides an overall summary of the total costs compared to benefits.
Financial projections are a forecast of future revenues and expenses for your business. Creating projections on a yearly basis helps you to think strategically about the current financial performance of the business, and establish a clear course to follow. Use a financial projections template to start planning and working on your own projections. This template includes multiple financial worksheets like a balance sheet, cash flow statement, income statement, and more.
A gap analysis is used to compare the difference between actual performance and potential or desired performance. This analysis could be used to gauge the performance gap for an overall company, a specific project, workload amounts, or available resources. Use this simple gap analysis template to get started quickly. Add specific objectives that you would like to analyze, compare the current state against desired state, and determine steps to reduce the gap.
A loan amortization schedule helps you pay off loans, such as a mortgage or car loans, through regular monthly payments over time. As some loans will take years to pay off, use an amortization schedule to track how much you have paid, the interest accrued, and amount still owing. This loan amortization template enables you to set regular payments and input additional payments made. With pre-built formulas included, interest amounts and balances will automatically update as payments are made.
Identifying risk early on is important to the success of any business or project. And, ensuring you have a process in place to pinpoint and analyze potential risk is helpful. Use this risk analysis template to document potential risks, rank them based on impact and likelihood, and determine next steps to mitigate the issue before it occurs.
The root cause analysis is a form of problem solving that helps to determine the root cause of issues that occur. By mapping out the entire cause and effect chain, you can start with the issue and trace back to the initial action that started the chain in motion. With this root cause analysis template, you can start mapping issues right away. The template has a customizable format to help you identify the issue, create cause-and-effect chains, and define next steps to prevent the issue from occurring in the future.
Creating a detailed Strengths Weakness Opportunities Threats (SWOT) analysis is a helpful first step for creating a business plan. Completing your SWOT analysis early on will enable you to formulate the direction your business should take. The first two areas (strengths and weakness) look at internal factors of your business, while the second two (opportunities and threats) focus on external factors. This simple SWOT analysis template provides prompts to help you complete the four sections of your analysis, and provides columns to compare your company to the competition.
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