The Authority Guide to Financial Forecasting for SMEs

Simon Thompson is the UK's foremost specialist in financial forecasting for small businesses. Established in 2011, his business 'Edge Forecast' has refined a unique combination of expertise, support and software which has helped UK businesses raise millions of pounds of crowd-funded, angel and bank finance.Having built hundreds of tailored SME forecasts in that period his experience of solving this universal small business chore is unrivalled and now he shares the inside secrets of that success.

Part I: Welcome to my world - 1; Introduction - 3; Is this book for you? - 5; How will this book help? - 7; Doing it properly: profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet - 9; Part II:Before you start - 11; Why do we forecast? - 13; The eight essential benchmarks of all good forecasts - 15; Understanding profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet - 21; Part III: Ten logical, comprehensive steps to a great forecast - 29; An introduction to the ten steps - 31; Step 1: The global considerations - 33; Step 2: The chart of accounts - 43; Step 3: Opening balances - 49; Step 4: Capital expenditure - 53; Step 5: P&L: sales revenue - 59; Step 6: P&L: direct costs - 63; Step 7: P&L: overheads - 67; Step 8: Debt funding: bank and other loans - 73;Step 9: Investment and dividends - 79; Step 10: Publishing reports - 83; About Edge Forecast - 87; About the author - 89