Financial Plan Templates

This Excel Financial Plan Template is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for those who wish to prepare their own financial plan presentation but don't wish to invest the significant time necessary to create the financial statements or a financial plan template itself. It is designed to accommodate time period of your choosing – 3 or 5 years, or any other period, if you wish to customize the financial plan template further. The financial plan template comes pre–configured to accept the most popular asset, liability and expense categories, and is easily expandable by anyone with a basic knowledge of Excel.

Most of the future years' data on the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet is calculated based on the input required on the Assumptions tab. There, you will be able to enter anticipated growth rates for your major revenue categories, your ratios to net sales for your cost of goods and annual inflation rates.

On the Personnel tab you can enter annual salaries of your full time emloyees and hourly rates of your remaining staff. This will help you calculate the salary expenses, including benefits.

The Depreciation tab of this financial plan template is here for you to enter your fixed assets and their useful lives. This will calculate your depreciation expense as well as the accummulated depreciation which will appear on the balance sheet.

The Chart Data tab contains data needed for the charts and does not require any input from you.

The Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet tabs require input from you in the cells using blue font. The remaining cells are calculated.

The Cash Flow is calculated based on your Profit & Loss and the Balance Sheet and does not need any input from you.

The Highlights tab takes the most important pieces of financial data contained in your presentation and puts them all on one page to give a quick overview of the business plan from the financial perspective.

The Charts tab does not require any input from you. It contains the following charts: Sales, Operating Expenses, Sources and Uses of Cash and Net Income.


This spreadsheet was developed by a professional accountant with a CPA certification.

What You Need in a Good Financial Plan Template

Most entrepreneurs are very excited about their ideas and have a pretty good idea how to implement them. But when it comes to putting it all down on paper, in a form of a business plan, or a financial plan, that's another story. It's just not something that comes naturally at first. Large corporations prepare financial plans all the time. It's a skill one acquires quickly, because it's done every year, if not more often.

Most large companies have a planning cycle composed of some sort of a strategic plan, usually a 5 or 3 year plan, followed by an annual budget, which takes the first year of that strategic plan and breaks it down by month. Then, as regular updates, monthly or quarterly forecasts are prepared, because even a one–year budget is sometimes too static for the changing environment.

So, believe me, in my 25+ years in corporate life I've had my share of planning. I couldn't imagine several months going by without preparing some kind of a financial plan. And we all had financial plan templates – something that was done last year, last quarter. So, most of the work was about updating the content, the new marketing and competitive information and – most importantly – the numbers. I have quickly learned the value of having some way of automating the process, because nothing needed as many changes as our budgets and strategic financial plans.

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Using a Financial Plan Template to Obtain Financing

Even though financial planning ought to be an ongoing part of any business, often it is only at the start–up phase that people get around to preparing a financial plan. I understand that. Financial planning is not part of a small business culture yet. But venture capitalists, bankers and potential investors will need to see numbers before they make any commitment to extend financing to you.

So, as you work on your business plan and start seeing the numbers you generate with your financial plan template, keep one thing in mind – it's not always that good to have great–looking numbers. It depends how you arrived at them. Using your financial plan templates to show an overly optimistic scenario can be devastating to you down the road. Before you start thinking about your investors and what they are expecting to see, you really owe it to yourself to use the most realistic assumptions and the most critical data you can muster and see what the financial plan templates show you – the future business owner – first!

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