Forecast revenue template

Your forecast is based on your past performance and the current state of your business. It is not a guess! There are a ton of benefits to forecasting your revenue. With personal finances, you plan your budget based on your income. Aside from your fixed expenses rent, utilities, etc. The difference with a business, though, is your revenue is rarely the same each month. This can make it difficult to budget for operating expenses like marketing or new expenses like hiring employees.

Revenue forecasting helps bridge that gap, particularly for operating expenses. This will allow you to know how much you can budget for marketing campaigns, new hires, software, and other expenses that change over time. Hiring is unique because unlike some other expenses, it usually needs to be planned months in advance and your revenue plays a major role in your hiring decisions. The opposite is also true though. If your forecast shows a decline or slowdown in revenue growth, your hiring plan might be more conservative.

A lot of companies use spreadsheets for revenue forecasting. However, there are several downsides to going that route, which we touch on in this article.

If you want to follow along, or if you just want an easier alternative to spreadsheets, you can try Finmark for free here. Products are the items you sell. For our fictional company, our main product is our subscription, which we offer in three different plans:. However, we highly recommend using actuals here so your forecast is as accurate as possible. If you have non-recurring revenue, you can add that in too. They pay a one-time fee for each template and they can use it as much as they want.

We also need to add our revenue stream for our templates. You have your product and your revenue stream. The last part of the equation is your revenue driver. A revenue driver is what your revenue growth is based on. If you want to see how to forecast with marketing and sales led conversions, check out this guide. Lastly, we need to enter our expected monthly growth rate. How much do we expect our customer count to increase each month?

This step is very important. The growth rate you put here should be based on data. Included on this page, you'll find a sales forecast sample , a month sales forecasting template for multiple products , a sales forecast presentation example , and many more helpful templates. Excel Google Sheets Smartsheet. This sales forecast sample template is simple to use and provides an example of the forecasted sales of a product. Customize this template by using a forecasting technique to gather data, including historical sales information, economic trends, or comparisons within your industry.

Enter the year, product, and unit type. Then, add the number of units sold and price per unit — the sales amount and percentage totals will calculate for each month with built-in formulas.

Smartsheet is a cloud-based platform that allows sales teams to effectively manage pipelines by creating one location to track and manage efforts, surface open and at-risk opportunities, and provide real-time visibility to improve forecasting.

See Smartsheet in action. Watch a free demo. Excel Smartsheet. This sales forecasting template provides an estimate of future sales for multiple products in a yearly view, but you can customize it to project sales for any period of time. Enter the product, service, or other category name according to your needs. Then, enter your estimated monthly sales. There is also space to add historical sales, which can help you identify trends and other information that will be useful for making future projections.

This customizable sales forecast template is designed to forecast sales for a month time period. Enter the number of units sold, unit price, and unit cost of goods sold CoGS. This template also provides year-to-year comparisons to identify the years that saw the highest rate of growth. Excel Google Sheets. This sales forecast template is user-friendly and displays the monthly and yearly sales projection for a product at a glance.

Simply enter the number of units sold and price per unit for a product. How you forecast revenue for your business will depend on the type of industry in which it operates.

We have created revenue forecasting template for a number of industries, some which are listed below. More templates are available in our Business Templates Section , and more will be added in the future. Whichever method you use to forecast revenue, the important thing is to get a best estimate and start the revenue projection; it can always be adjusted later as the plan takes shape.

Revenue forecasting is an art not a science, no one expects you to be able to predict the future, you are making educated guesses based on the information you have available to give a realistic estimate of what you think the forecast revenue will be. The next step in producing a five year financial projection for your business plan using our financial projections template is to learn how to calculate the gross margin percentage for your products and services.

This is part of the How to Create Financial Projections Guide a series of posts on how our template is used to produce simple financial projections for a business plan. He has worked as an accountant and consultant for more than 25 years and has built financial models for all types of industries. These templates give extremely useful guidelines which will help you in managing the financials of your company. These templates are very easy to understand and use, and thus can be used by a large group of people.

These forecast templates also provide models which are very well designed and can be the basis of the future of your business. Excel forecast templates are also useful in doing quick calculations with hardly any room for error regarding the finances of your business. These templates take into account all your previous data to give a very realistic forecast. You can also see income statement templates. Another useful tool for your business is an Excel planner template.