From Philip Campbell’s book A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting: Discover the Secret to Driving Growth, Profitability, and Cash Flow Higher.
Walking Through the Forecasting Process
If you have a CFO on your team, great.
This book provides them the step-by-step process they can implement for you. It also shows a CFO how to use financial forecasting to increase their personal credibility and influence inside your company so they can play a more strategic and vital role in the future of your company.
If you don’t have a dedicated CFO on your team, that doesn’t mean your company doesn’t have a CFO. You have one all right. It’s YOU. (The million-dollar question is whether you’re a CFO Rock Star or not.)
You will need to learn how to implement the forecasting process I have set out for you. Or you can get some help from someone inside, or outside, your company to do it.
Either way, one of the benefits you will receive by reading this book is it provides you the roadmap for how a seasoned CFO can create true and lasting value for your company. This roadmap will come in very handy as your company grows and you begin looking for a dedicated CFO to add to your leadership team in the future.
CPAs, accountants, bookkeepers, and consultants who serve businesses will benefit from financial forecasting as well.
The business owners and entrepreneurs you serve are starving for more insightful and action-oriented financial information. Helping clients see what’s about to happen financially is a powerful way for you to add value. It helps you move past just providing the traditional financial statements or a tax return for your clients and begin to make a true and lasting impact on your client’s business and its financial future.
The Forecasting Process
Here’s how we’ll walk through the financial forecasting process in this book:
- Highlight the benefits of financial forecasting. This section speaks to the WHYs and purpose of forecasting. Specifically, why forecasting is the single most powerful tool to include in your financial toolkit if you are serious about creating financial success.
- Show you the step-by-step process for planning, creating, and presenting your financial forecast. We’ll talk about the common mistakes that people make in forecasting so you can avoid the pitfalls. I’ll provide you the recipe to follow as you create your first forecast.
- Provide you with next steps and tips on how to overcome the obstacles and roadblocks that can get in your way as you get your financial forecasting process up and running.
I have also included two bonus chapters for you.
The first bonus chapter is a 3-part plan for breathing financial life back into your business. It will give you a sensible plan, a roadmap, you can follow that will guide you on your path to building a strong, wealth generating business. This roadmap will guide you along the full financial life cycle of your business.
The second bonus chapter will help you evaluate your accounting and finance function, what some consider a necessary evil, and turn it into an asset the financial community respects and admires and that forms the foundation for helping you grow and succeed financially.
Too many entrepreneurs have a weak accounting and financial function in their business.
It handcuffs their ability to grow and attract capital and talent. It hurts their credibility with bankers, lenders, investors, partners, and all those in the financial community you need to grow your business successfully.
I’ll show you how to turn the accounting and financial function within your business into an important strategic asset. An asset that will help you win in business. An asset that will help you create confidence and credibility with all the people interested in, and invested in, the financial success of your company.
Free Downloads and Examples
I have included in the free resources section of the website that supports this book (www.ILoveForecasting.com) several rapid-learning videos so you can watch an example of the forecasting process in action.
I pull up my forecasting software tool of choice while you watch the step-by-step process with me explaining a very specific aspect of the forecasting process for you. You can both read and watch how the process works so you know exactly how to get started with your own forecast.
The short, rapid-learning videos are an important part of how I want to add value for you with this book. It will help crystalize the principles in a way that you will really enjoy. I sincerely want you to get value in an amount far, far greater than the time and money you have invested with me. I hope it will make the information easy to understand and easy to implement.
Life is very much like a buffet line. Life is self-serve. Nobody brings it to you. You cannot sit at the table and bang your knife and fork for service. You have to get up, accept responsibility, and serve yourself.
If you want to get to the front of the buffet line of life, two steps are necessary. First, get in line! Make a decision to be excellent at what you do and then get in line. From that moment on, do something every day to improve. Second, stay in line. Don’t make an occasional attempt at personal improvement and then go back and watch television. Get in line and stay in line.
Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Learn and practice new things every single day. Keep moving forward. Never lose your momentum.”
—Brian Tracy, Focal Point
In the videos (and throughout the book), I will focus on modeling a full set of financial statements. We are not just forecasting profit. We are going to create a forecast that includes an income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash flows.
We want a full set of financial statements so we have a view of what we expect financial results, financial position, and cash flows to look like for the near future. That way we are hooking the overall vision and strategy you have for your company up to the likely financial implications of achieving that strategy.
Small Hinges Swing Big Doors
Financial forecasting is a powerful business tool all by itself. But what excites me even more is the way a reliable financial forecast opens the door to even bigger benefits in your business. It starts by providing you a clear view of where you are going financially. It shines a light on the dangers and opportunities that lie ahead on your journey to grow and succeed in business.
Then even larger doors begin to swing open.
As you make forecasting a part of your monthly financial rhythm, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your business model and the key drivers of financial results.
It creates clarity for you and your management team about what financial success should look like.
It highlights the specific drivers of profitability and cash flow that are ripe for improvement.
Your team begins to better understand the financial statements and they start using them as a decision-making tool. It becomes so much easier to respond to the curve balls that business will throw at you from time to time.
Your confidence goes up. Your lenders’ and investors’ confidence in you goes up. The business becomes easier to manage. You spend less time fighting fires. You reduce risk. You free up more of your time to focus on the parts of your business you enjoy and the areas where you can have the biggest impact.
And it all starts with a reliable financial forecast.
A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting:
A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting
Discover the Secret to Driving Growth, Profitability, and Cash Flow Higher
This book provides a straightforward, easy-to-understand guide to one of the most powerful financial tools in business: a reliable financial forecast. It will transform the financial future of your company and help you make better, faster, smarter financial decisions.
Too many entrepreneurs and CEOs today are feeling more like passengers than drivers in their business. They’re staring at their rearview mirror as they bounce along in the passenger seat. Their company is careening along on the highway of business as they wonder and worry about where their business might end up financially.
A reliable financial forecast solves this problem by providing a clear view through the financial windshield of your business. It creates the visibility and clarity you need to drive your company toward a bigger and brighter financial future.
What if you had answers to questions like:
What’s about to happen to my profitability and cash flow?
How much cash can we distribute to the owners of the business?
How long will it take to pay off our debt?
What will our taxable income be this year?
A reliable financial forecast puts the answers to these questions at your fingertips. It helps you take control of your profitability and cash flow because it gives you answers to the most important financial questions you have to deal with every day.
Put yourself in the driver’s seat of your business by tapping into the unique and exciting benefits that financial forecasting can unlock for you.
Buy the Kindle version at Amazon.
Buy the book at Barnes & Noble.
Buy the book at Bookmasters (including a PDF version you can download immediately).
Never Run Out of Cash
The 10 Cash Flow Rules You Can’t Afford to Ignore
The single biggest reason the small business failure rate is so high today is this one simple fact: Most business owners don’t really know what’s going on with their most precious asset – their cash.
Despite the fact that cash is the lifeblood of the business, the fuel that keeps the engine running, most business owners don’t truly understand thier cash flow. As a result, more businesses are failing today than ever before.
Never Run Out of Cash shows you a powerful and simple set of principles that will transform the way you manage your business from this point forward.
It’s an easy-to-understand, here’s exactly how you do it approach to understanding and managing your cash flow.
Buy the Kindle version at Amazon.
Buy the book at Barnes & Noble.
Understanding Your Cash Flow – In Less Than 10 Minutes
This online course teaches you a simple, step-by-step approach to understanding and managing your cash flow. Here are the two unique promises I make to you in this course:
- I’ll show you how to understand your cash flow in less than 10 minutes
- I’ll show you how to explain what happened to your cash last month to your business partner or banker (or maybe even your spouse) in a 2-minute conversation.
I take off my CPA hat and I speak in the language every business owner can relate to. No jargon. No stuffy financial rambling. Just a simple, common sense approach that only takes 10 minutes a month.
The course includes:
- The video presentation of the course. This is a screencast that you can watch and listen to on your favorite device. I walk you through the step-by-step process and show you how to understand your cash flow in less than 10 minutes a month.
- The course workbook. This is a downloadable workbook to help you get a fast start with the course material. It has all the examples and everything you need to complete your first Cash Flow Focus Report.
- The Cash Flow Focus Report. You get the links to download the PDF or spreadsheet version of the Cash Flow Focus Report. 10 minutes a month with this unique and simple tool and you will wonder how you ever got by without it.
- The slides from the presentation. You can download a document with a copy of each slide from the presentation so you can go back to any specific example or portion of the recorded presentation.
I provide a no questions asked, 100% refund guarantee with the course. If you don’t love the course I’ll refund 100% of the purchase price.
Learn more about the course.
If you have already purchased the course (and/or the related coaching), get the full course here.
