Business Plan Financials in Excel

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Add up what it costs to open Kettlewick Roastery & Café, add a contingency and an opening cash reserve, and work out how much the bank has to lend.
• Build the year-1 sales forecast month by month: cups and bean bags from capacity, open days, a seasonal index and a ramp-up curve, then revenue.
• Cost one cup from its recipe, add start-up waste, and calculate monthly and annual gross margin for the café and bean sales.
• Cost each role from wage, hours and on-costs, phase in hires by start month, and build the monthly operating-expense budget for year 1.
• Turn revenue, COGS and opex into a monthly P&L: EBITDA, depreciation of the fit-out, loan interest and profit before tax.
• The bank approved only $120,000 instead of $146,800, so the café opens with $37,400 cash. You build the monthly cash flow, find the lowest balance and size the extra funding needed.
• Work out how many cups a day the café must sell to cover its fixed costs, build a price × volume profit table and measure the margin of safety.
• Extend the plan to three years and calculate what a lender and an investor look at first: EBITDA, the debt service coverage ratio and the payback period on the owners' money.