How to create a financial forecast for an olive oil producer?

If you are serious about keeping visibility on your future cash flows, then you need to build and maintain a financial forecast for your olive oil producing company.

Putting together an olive oil producing company financial forecast may sound complex, but don’t worry, with the right tool, it’s easier than it looks, and The Business Plan Shop is here to guide you.

In this practical guide, we'll cover everything you need to know about building financial projections for your olive oil producing company. 

We will start by looking at why they are key, what information is needed, what a forecast looks like once completed, and what solutions you can use to create yours.

Let's dive in!

Why create and maintain a financial forecast for an olive oil producing company?

The financial projections for your olive oil producing company act as a financial blueprint to guide its growth with confidence and ensure its long-term financial viability. 

To create them, you will need to look at your business in detail - from sales to operating costs and investments - to assess how much profit it can generate in the years to come and what will be the associated cash flows.

During challenging market conditions, maintaining an up-to-date financial forecast enables early detection of potential financial shortfalls, allowing for timely adjustments or securing financing before facing a cash crisis. 

Your olive oil producing company's financial forecast will also prove invaluable when seeking financing. Banks and investors will undoubtedly request a thorough examination of your financial figures, making precision and presentation essential.

What information is used as input to build an olive oil producing company financial forecast?

A olive oil producing company'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 olive oil producing company.

If you are creating (or updating) the forecast of an existing olive oil producing company, 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 olive oil producing company 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 olive oil producing company 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 olive oil producing company's financial forecast.

The sales forecast for an olive oil producing company

The sales forecast, also called topline projection, is normally where you will start when building your olive oil producing company 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 olive oil producers), 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 an olive oil producing company

The next step is to estimate the costs you’ll have to incur to operate your olive oil producing company.

These will vary based on where your business is located, and its overall size (level of sales, personnel, etc.). 

But your olive oil producing company's operating expenses should normally include the following items:

This list is not exhaustive by any means, and will need to be tailored to your olive oil producing company's specific circumstances.

What investments are needed to start or grow an olive oil producing company?

Once you have an idea of how much sales you could achieve and what it will cost to run your olive oil producing company, it is time to look into the equipment required to launch or expand the activity.

For an olive oil producing company, capital expenditures and initial working capital items could include:

Again, this list will need to be adjusted according to the specificities of your olive oil producing company.

The financing plan of your olive oil producing company

The next step in the creation of your financial forecast for your olive oil producing company 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 an olive oil producing company?

Now let's have a look at the main output tables of your olive oil producing company's financial forecast.

The profit & loss forecast

The forecasted profit & loss statement will enable you to visualise your olive oil producing company's expected growth and profitability over the next three to five years.

A financially viable P&L statement for an olive oil producing company should normally show:

• Sales growing above inflation
• Stable or expanding (ideally) profit margins
• A net profit

This will of course depend on the stage of your business: a new venture might be loss-making until it reaches its breakeven point in year 2 or 3, for example.

The projected balance sheet

The projected balance sheet gives an overview of your olive oil producing company's financial structure at the end of the financial year.

It is composed of three categories of items: assets, liabilities and equity:

• Assets: are what the business possesses and uses to produce cash flows. It includes resources such as cash, buildings, equipment, and accounts receivable (money owed by clients).
• Liabilities: are the debts of your olive oil producing company. They include accounts payable (money owed to suppliers), taxes due and bank loans.
• Equity: is the combination of what has been invested by the business owners and the cumulative profits 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 olive oil producing company 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 olive oil producing company'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 olive oil producing company 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 olive oil producing company's financial plan. 

Which tool should you use to create your olive oil producing company's financial forecast?

Creating your olive oil producing company's financial forecast may sound fairly daunting, but the good news is that there are several ways to go about it.

Using online financial projection software to build your olive oil producing company'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 olive oil producing company 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 olive oil producing company's financial forecast?

Creating an accurate and error-free olive oil producing company financial forecast with a spreadsheet is very technical and requires a deep knowledge of accounting and an understanding of financial modelling.

Very few business owners are financially savvy enough to be able to build a forecast themselves on Excel without making mistakes. 

Lenders and investors know this, which is why forecasts created on Excel by the business owner are often frowned upon. 

Having numbers one can trust is key when it comes to financial forecasting and to that end using software is much safer. 

Using financial forecasting software is also faster than using a spreadsheet, and, with the rise of artificial intelligence, software is also becoming smarter at helping us analyse the numbers to make smarter decisions.

Finally, like everything with spreadsheets, tracking actuals vs. forecasts and keeping your projections up to date as the year progresses is manual, tedious, and error-prone. Whereas financial projection software like The Business Plan Shop is built 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. A financial projection shows 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 forecast up-to-date is the only way to maintain visibility on future cash flows.
3. Using financial forecasting software makes it easy to create and maintain up-to-date projections for your olive oil producing company.

You have reached the end of our guide. We hope you now have a better understanding of how to create a financial forecast for an olive oil producing company. Don't hesitate to contact our team if you have any questions or want to share your experience building forecasts!

Also on The Business Plan Shop

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

Know someone who runs or wants to start an olive oil producing company? Share our financial projection guide with them!