Creating Realistic Financial Projections for Your Small Business

Where do your financial projections come from? Your knowledge of your business and industry, and your best estimates of what might happen.

• Purpose of Financial Projections:
  • Use to plan, set realistic goals, and secure funding.
  • Use as a roadmap to assessing the feasibility of your plan.
  • Importance in developing investor confidence & improving internal decision-making.

• Components of Financial Projections:
  • Sales Forecast: predicting future sales based on market research & historical data.
  • Expense Forecast: estimating fixed & variable costs over time.
  • Cash Flow Projection: projecting inflows and outflows to ensure liquidity.

• Creating the Projections:
  • Steps: gathering data, making assumptions, & applying forecasting methods.
  • Tools and software: use of a SCORE provided Excel spreadsheet model to generate a projection.
  • Importance of recording assumptions & revisiting and adjusting projections regularly.



• Using Projections to Monitor Performance:
  • Comparing actual results against projections to measure performance.
  • Identifying variances & reasons behind them.
  • Making informed adjustments to strategies based on analysis.

This is the third in a series of 3 consecutive finance webinars offered on Saturday, August 9, 2025. Please register for each class you plan to attend.

Faculty: A team of SCORE and community volunteers with wide ranging business and financial experience.