How to create a financial forecast for a landscape design firm?

Creating a financial forecast for your landscape design firm, 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 landscape design firm 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 landscape design firm?

In order to prosper, your business needs to have visibility on what lies ahead and the right financial resources to grow. This is where having a financial forecast for your landscape design firm becomes handy.

Creating a landscape design firm financial forecast forces you to take stock of where your business stands and where you want it to go. 

Once you have clarity on the destination, you will need to draw up a plan to get there and assess what it means in terms of future profitability and cash flows for your landscape design firm.

Having this clear plan in place will give you the confidence needed to move forward with your business’s development. 

Having an up-to-date financial forecast for a landscape design firm is also useful if your trading environment worsens, as the forecast enables you to adjust to your new market conditions and anticipate any potential cash shortfall. 

Finally, your landscape design firm's financial projections will also help you secure financing, as banks and investors alike will want to see accurate projections before agreeing to finance your business.

What information is used as input to build a landscape design firm financial forecast?

A landscape design firm's financial forecast needs to be built on the right foundation: your assumptions. 

The data required to create your assumptions will depend on whether you are a new or existing landscape design firm.

If you are creating (or updating) the forecast of an existing landscape design firm, then your main inputs will be historical accounting data and operating metrics, and your team’s view on what to expect for the next three to five years.

If you are building financial projections for a new landscape design firm startup, you will need to rely on market research to form your go-to-market strategy and derive your sales forecast.

For a new venture, you will also need an itemised list of resources needed for the landscape design firm to operate, along with a list of equipment required to launch the venture (more on that below). 

Now that you understand what is needed, let’s have a look at what elements will make up your landscape design firm's financial forecast.

The sales forecast for a landscape design firm

The sales forecast, also called topline projection, is normally where you will start when building your landscape design firm financial forecast.

Creating a coherent sales projection boils down to estimating two key drivers:

• The average price 
• The number of monthly transactions

To do this, you will need to rely on historical data (for an existing business), market research data (for both new and existing landscape design firms), and consider the elements below:

After the sales forecast comes the operating expenses budget, which we will now look into in more detail.

The operating expenses for a landscape design firm

The next step is to estimate the expenses needed to run your landscape design firm 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 landscape design firm'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 landscape design firm might not have the same level of expenditure as a larger one, for example.

What investments are needed to start or grow a landscape design firm?

Your landscape design firm 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 landscape design firm, these could include:

Again, this list will need to be adjusted according to the size and ambitions of your landscape design firm.

The financing plan of your landscape design firm

The next step in the creation of your financial forecast for your landscape design firm 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 landscape design firm?

Now let's have a look at the main output tables of your landscape design firm's financial forecast.

The projected profit & loss statement

The projected profit & loss shows how profitable your landscape design firm is likely to be in the years to come.

For your landscape design firm 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 landscape design firms, there is some leniency for startups which will have numbers that will look a bit different than existing businesses.

The projected balance sheet

Your landscape design firm's forecasted balance sheet enables you to assess your financial structure and working capital requirements.

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

• Assets: represent what the business owns and uses to produce cash flows. It includes resources such as cash, equipment, and accounts receivable (money owed by clients).
• Liabilities: represent funds advanced to the business by lenders and other creditors. It includes items such as accounts payable (money owed to suppliers), taxes due and loans.
• 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 forecast

Your landscape design firm's cash flow forecast shows how much cash your business is expected to consume or generate in the years to come.

It is best practice to organise the cash flow forecast by nature to better explain where cash is used or generated by the landscape design firm:

• Operating cash flow: shows how much cash is generated by the operating activities
• Investing cash flow: shows how much will be invested in capital expenditure to maintain or expand the business 
• Financing cash flow: shows if the business is raising new capital or repaying financiers (debt repayment, dividends)

Keeping an eye on (and regularly updating) your landscape design firm's cash flow forecast is key to ensuring that your business has sufficient liquidity to operate normally and to detect financing requirements as early as possible.

If you are trying to raise capital, you will normally be asked to provide a monthly cash flow forecast in your landscape design firm's financial plan - so that banks or investors can assess seasonal variation and ensure your business is appropriately capitalised.

Which tool should you use to create your landscape design firm's financial projections?

Building a landscape design firm financial forecast is not difficult provided that you use the right tool for the job. Let’s see what options are available below.

Using online financial forecasting software to build your landscape design firm's projections

The modern and easiest way is to use professional online financial forecasting 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 landscape design firm 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 landscape design firm's financial forecast?

Creating an accurate and error-free landscape design firm financial forecast on Excel (or any spreadsheet) is very technical and requires both a strong grasp of accounting principles and solid skills in financial modelling.

Most entrepreneurs lack the expertise required to create an accurate financial forecast using spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Sheets. As a result, it is unlikely anyone will trust your numbers.

The second reason is that it is inefficient. Building forecasts on spreadsheets was the only option in the 1990s and early 2000s, nowadays technology has advanced and software can do it much faster and much more accurately. 

This is why professional forecasters all use software. With the rise of AI, software is also becoming smarter at helping us detect mistakes in our forecasts and helping us analyse the numbers to make better decisions.

Finally, like everything with spreadsheets, tracking actuals vs. forecasts and updating your forecast as the year progresses is manual, tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming. Whereas financial forecasting software like The Business Plan Shop is built for this.

Use our financial projection templates for inspiration

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

Our examples contain a complete business plan with a financial forecast and a written presentation of the company, the team, the strategy, and the medium-term objectives.

Whether you are just starting out or already have your own landscape design firm, looking at our financial forecast template is a good way to:

• Understand what a complete business plan should look like
• Understand how you should model financial items for your landscape design firm

Takeaways

1. A financial forecast shows expected growth, profitability, and cash generation metrics for your landscape design firm.
2. Tracking actuals vs. forecast and having an up-to-date financial forecast is key to maintaining visibility on your future cash flows.
3. Using financial forecasting software is the modern way of creating and maintaining financial projections.

We hope that this guide helped you gain a clearer perspective on the steps needed to create the financial forecast for a landscape design firm. Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!

Also on The Business Plan Shop

• Financial forecast example
• Example of financial forecast for business idea
• How to create a sales forecast for a business?

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