What You'll Create
A slide show which details the start-up and operating costs for your business. It will compare the revenue (money) your business brings in with the money you spend operating your business. Finally, you will create a graph which shows when your business will hit the break even point, the point at which your start-up debt is erased and your business turns a profit.
Why
Almost no business can succeed without paying attention to the financial details. Your success depends on knowing how much money you are bringing in compared to how much you are putting out. Plotting your expenses and revenue will help you determine what kind of prices you will need to charge to be competitive while being able to pay your bills.
Features to include
You will need to use tables and graphs in your presentation.
A successful result will depend less on spinning text or sounds than it will on solid evidence of research and thought. Your numbers, while mostly estimates, should at be as realistic as possible.
Your slideshow should have a consistent look and feel across every slide. In other words, don't make each slide look completely different with random fonts, colour and layout. Imagine you are presenting it to the bank or other financial backer. You want them to take your presentation seriously.
Creating Your Slide Show
Your slide show will consist of six parts. Each is outlined here. Follow this outline carefully to best insure that you include all the required information.
Slide #1 - Title Slide (See an Example)
With name of business, address and contact information, and your name(s).
Slide #2 - StartUp Inventory (See an Example)
List the items you will need to start your business and their approximate cost. Provide a total cost.
Slide #3 - Staffing Costs (See an Example)
For each employee - state the hourly, daily, weekly and/or monthly salary they will be paid. Provide a total cost for each month (or week) of your forecast in slide 6. To make things easier round up your total to the nearest 10s or 100s place. To calculate a monthly income from a weekly income, multiply by 52 (weeks) and divide by 12 (months).
Slide #4 - Monthly Expenses (See an Example)
Note your typical monthly operating costs. You will likely have to estimate many of them. Don't forget things like rent, power, insurance, inventory, advertising, telephone, loan repayment and transportation.
Slide #5 - Predict your Sales/Service Revenue (See an Example)
Make some predictions about how your business will perform. How many units will you sell, how much money will you bring in? Create a (prediction) forecast for six months to a year (some businesses will work in weeks, not months). NOTE: You will likely increase sales with each passing month as more people learn about your business. Your forecast should reflect this. Also, as your sales increase usually your costs increase as well.
Slide #6 - Plot Your Income Against Your Expenses (See an Example)
Plot out your net income for each of the 6-12 months (weeks) for which you created data. In general, if your company will make money by month 6 then 6 months will be all you need. If however, your company won't make more than it owes by month 12 then only go up to that point. Now you know why you were encouraged to pick a simple idea!
NOTE: Where it says Slide #1, Slide #2, etc., you many need more than one slide for each section. These are simply the parts of your presentation.
Saving Your Work
Inside your folder save your slide show as "8-Slideshow.ppt".
