How to create a financial forecast for a heavy equipment maker?

Creating a financial forecast for your heavy equipment manufacturing business, and ensuring it stays up to date, is the only way to maintain visibility on future cash flows. 

This might sound complex, but with the right guidance and tools, creating an accurate financial forecast for your heavy equipment manufacturing business is not that hard.

In this guide, we'll cover everything from the main goal of a financial projection, the data you need as input, to the tables that compose it, and the tools that can help you build a forecast efficiently.

Without further ado, let us begin!

Why create and maintain a financial forecast for a heavy equipment manufacturing business?

Creating and maintaining an up-to-date financial forecast is the only way to steer the development of your heavy equipment manufacturing business and ensure that it can be financially viable in the years to come.

A financial plan for a heavy equipment manufacturing business enables you to look at your business in detail - from income to operating costs and investments - to evaluate its expected profitability and future cash flows.

This gives you the visibility needed to plan future investments and expansion with confidence. 

And, when your trading environment gets tougher, having an up to date heavy equipment manufacturing business forecast enables you to detect potential upcoming financing shortfalls in advance, enabling you to make adjustments or secure financing before you run out of cash.

It’s also important to remember that your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial forecast will be essential when looking for financing. You can be 100% certain that banks and investors will ask to see your numbers, so make sure they’re set out accurately and attractively.

What information is needed to build a heavy equipment manufacturing business financial forecast?

The quality of your inputs is key when it comes to financial modelling: no matter how good the model is, if your inputs are off, so will the forecast.

If you are building a financial plan to start a heavy equipment manufacturing business, you will need to have done your market research and have a clear picture of your sales and marketing strategies so that you can project revenues with confidence.

You will also need to have a clear idea of what resources will be required to operate the heavy equipment manufacturing business on a daily basis, and to have done your research with regard to the equipment needed to launch your venture (see further down this guide). 

If you are creating a financial forecast of an existing heavy equipment manufacturing business, things are usually simpler as you will be able to use your historical accounting data as a budgeting base, and complement that with your team’s view on what lies ahead for the years to come.

Let's now zoom in on what will go in your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial forecast.

The sales forecast for a heavy equipment manufacturing business

From experience, it usually makes sense to start your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial projection with the revenues forecast.

The inputs used to forecast your sales will include the historical trading data of your heavy equipment manufacturing business (which can be used as a starting point for existing businesses) and the data collected in your market research (which both new ventures and existing businesses need to project their sales forward).

Your heavy equipment manufacturing business's sales forecast can be broken down into two key estimates: 

• The average price 
• The number of monthly transactions

To assess these variables accurately, you will need to consider the following factors:

Once you have a sales forecast in place, the next step will be to work on your overhead budget. Let’s have a look at that now. 

The operating expenses for a heavy equipment manufacturing business

The next step is to estimate the expenses needed to run your heavy equipment manufacturing business on a day-to-day basis.

These will vary based on the level of sales expected, and the location and size of your business. 

But your heavy equipment manufacturing business's operating expenses should include the following items at a minimum:

This list is, of course, not exhaustive, and you'll have to adapt it according to your precise business model and size. A small heavy equipment manufacturing business might not have the same level of expenditure as a larger one, for example.

What investments are needed to start or grow a heavy equipment manufacturing business?

Your heavy equipment manufacturing business financial forecast will also need to include the capital expenditures (aka investments in plain English) and initial working capital items required for the creation or development of your business.

For a heavy equipment manufacturing business, these could include:

Again, this list will need to be adjusted according to the size and ambitions of your heavy equipment manufacturing business.

The financing plan of your heavy equipment manufacturing business

The next step in the creation of your financial forecast for your heavy equipment manufacturing business is to think about how you might finance your business.

You will have to assess how much capital will come from shareholders (equity) and how much can be secured through banks.

Bank loans will have to be modelled so that you can separate the interest expenses from the repayments of principal, and include all this data in your forecast.

Issuing share capital and obtaining a bank loan are two of the most common ways that entrepreneurs finance their businesses.

What tables compose the financial plan for a heavy equipment manufacturing business?

Now let's have a look at the main output tables of your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial forecast.

The projected profit & loss statement

The projected profit & loss shows how profitable your heavy equipment manufacturing business is likely to be in the years to come.

For your heavy equipment manufacturing business to be financially viable, your projected P&L should ideally show:

• Sales growing above inflation (the higher the better)
• Profit margins which are stable or expanding (the higher the better) 
• A net profit at the end of each financial year (the higher the better)

This is for established heavy equipment makers, there is some leniency for startups which will have numbers that will look a bit different than existing businesses.

The projected balance sheet

Your heavy equipment manufacturing business's projected balance sheet provides a snapshot of your business’s financial position at year-end.

It is composed of three types of elements: assets, liabilities and equity:

• Assets: represent what the business possesses including cash, equipment, and accounts receivable (money owed by clients).
• Liabilities: represent funds advanced to the business by lenders and other creditors. They include accounts payable (money owed to suppliers), taxes payable and loans from banks and financial institutions.
• Equity: is the combination of what has been invested by the business owners and the cumulative profits and losses generated by the business to date (which are called retained earnings). Equity is a proxy for the value of the owner's stake in the business.

The cash flow projection

The cash flow forecast of your heavy equipment manufacturing business will show how much cash the business is expected to generate or consume over the next three to five years.

There are multiple ways of presenting a cash flow forecast but from experience, it is better to organise it by nature in order to clearly show these elements:

• Operating cash flow: how much cash is generated by the heavy equipment manufacturing business's operations
• Investing cash flow: what is the business investing to expand or maintain its equipment 
• Financing cash flow: is the business raising additional funds or repaying financiers (debt repayment, dividends)

Your cash flow forecast is the most important element of your overall financial projection and that’s where you should focus your attention to ensure that your heavy equipment manufacturing business is adequately funded.

Note: if you are preparing a financial forecast in order to try to secure funding, you will need to include both a yearly and monthly cash flow forecast in your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial plan. 

Which tool should you use to create your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial forecast?

Using the right tool or solution will make the creation of your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial forecast much easier than it sounds. Let’s explore the main options.

Using online financial projection software to build your heavy equipment manufacturing business's forecast

The modern and easiest way to build a forecast is to use professional financial projection software such as the one we offer at The Business Plan Shop.

There are several advantages to using specialised software:

• You can easily create your financial forecast by letting the software take care of the financial calculations for you without errors
• You have access to complete financial forecast templates
• You get a complete financial forecast ready to be sent to your bank or investors
• You can easily track your actual financial performance against your financial forecast, and recalibrate your forecast as the year goes by
• You can create scenarios to stress test your forecast's main assumptions
• You can easily update your forecast as time goes by to maintain visibility on future cash flows
• You have a friendly support team on standby to assist you when you are stuck
• It’s cost-efficient and much cheaper than using an accountant or consultant (see below)

If you are interested in this type of solution, you can try our forecasting software for free by signing up here.

Calling in a financial consultant or chartered accountant

Enlisting the help of a consultant or accountant is also a good way to obtain a professional heavy equipment manufacturing business financial forecast.

The downside of this solution is its cost. From experience, obtaining a simple financial forecast over three years (including a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement) is likely to cost a minimum of £700 or $1,000.

The indicative cost above, is for a small business, and a forecast is done as a one-shot exercise. Using a consultant or accountant to track your actuals vs. forecast and to keep your financial projections up to date on a monthly or quarterly basis will cost a lot more.

If you opt for this solution, make sure your accountant has in-depth knowledge of your industry, so that they may challenge your figures and offer insights (as opposed to just taking your assumptions at face value to create the forecast).

Why not use a spreadsheet such as Excel or Google Sheets to build your heavy equipment manufacturing business's financial forecast?

You and your financial partners need numbers you can trust. Unless you have studied finance or accounting, creating a trustworthy and error-free heavy equipment manufacturing business financial forecast on a spreadsheet is likely to prove challenging.

Financial modelling is very technical by nature and requires a solid grasp of accounting principles to be done without errors. This means that using spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Sheets to create accurate financial forecasts is out of reach for most business owners.

Creating forecasts in Excel is also inefficient nowadays:

• Software has advanced to the point where forecasting can be done much faster and more accurately than manually on a spreadsheet.
• With artificial intelligence, the software is capable of detecting mistakes and helping decision-making.

Spreadsheets are versatile tools but they are not tailor-made for reporting. Importing your heavy equipment manufacturing business's accounting data in Excel to track actual vs. forecast is incredibly manual and tedious (and so is keeping forecasts up to date). It is much faster to use dedicated financial planning tools like The Business Plan Shop which are built specially for this.

Use our financial forecast templates for inspiration

The Business Plan Shop has dozens of financial forecast examples available.

Our templates contain both a financial forecast and a written business plan which presents, in detail, the company, the team, the strategy, and the medium-term objectives.

Our templates are a great source of inspiration, whether you just want to see what a complete business plan looks like, or are looking for concrete examples of how you should model financial elements in your own forecast.

Takeaways

1. Having a financial forecast enables you to visualise the expected growth, profitability, and cash generation for your business over the next three to five years.
2. Tracking actuals vs. forecast and keeping your financial projections up-to-date is the only way to get a view on what your heavy equipment manufacturing business future cash flows may look like.
3. Using financial forecasting software is the mordern and easy way to create and maintain your forecasts.

This is the end of our guide on how to build the financial forecast for a heavy equipment manufacturing business, we hope you found it useful. Don't hesitate to contact us if you want to share your feedback or have any questions.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

• Example of financial forecast
• How to project revenues for a business?
• Sample financial forecast for business idea

Know someone who owns or is thinking of starting a heavy equipment manufacturing business? Share our forecasting guide with them!