Once your financial analysis is completed and your business plan has been finalized, the real challenge of running your small business according to the plan begins. Understanding the realities a small business faces, we recognize that even a well developed business plan, while your ideal scenario, is open to change. Importantly for the health of your business however, it can not be totally disregarded. To address this balance, Business Financial Planner offers a set of financial planning software tools that allows you to control the business as it operates and measure whether it is meeting, exceeding or falling short of the business plan.

Importing Actual Business Data

In order to measure actual performance against the plan, Business Financial Planner needs to have access to the actual performance data. Via our intuitive financial planning software, inputting actual sales, expenses and other key parameters, can either be performed manually or, to make things easier, by using the dynamic link to an existing MS Excel spreadsheet.  Using this method means that data coming from any other accounting system, as long as it can be exported into Excel, can automatically be updated into Business Financial Planner with little to no effort required.

Actual vs Plan Financial Reports

Once the “actual” performance data has been imported into the financial planning software, analyzing the plan against actual results can begin. Business Financial Planner allows you to run all the major financial reports including Cash Flow, P&L and Balance Sheet as well as other sales, operational and financial parameters, while viewing both the business plan and actual results. Variances between the plan and actual values are presented as both amounts and percentages of the plan values. In order to get a full sense of the variances and their impact - our financial planning software provides the ability to view this information over a variety of different periods.

Rolling Forecasts

For a more long term and in-depth method of controlling your business, Business Financial Planner provides a Rolling Forecast capability. A rolling forecast enables you to forecast the performance of the business until the end of the plan period, as well as to view the situation at the end of each year of the business plan period. The integrated set of financial reports (P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow) gives you a one-stop view into a combination of  (a) the actual performance from the beginning of the plan until the present and (b) the updated plan data through to the end of the period of the plan.  

With the combination of all these features, Business Financial Planner provides the small business owner with robust financial planning software tools, not only for the up front business plan but also controlling the execution of the plan l throughout the plan period.

Download the free trial now to start analyzing your business