Polishing Your Crystal Ball Forrest City AR

Posted by : Joe Farace 4/5 SOHO Synapseshed: Polishing your crystal balldek: Making business forecasts for fun and profitBy Joe Farace

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-Alan Kay

Many SOHOers think that preparing a business forecast is difficult. They're not economists, they claim, but specialists in products and services their clients need. But forecasting doesn't have to be hard. If Alan Greenspan doesn't know what's going to happen next to the economy, how can you expect to nail it down perfectly?

One of the major advantages of creating a business forecast is that it forces you to analyze the cost of doing business and helps you set goals--all at the same time. Good record keeping reveals the incremental costs of accomplishing these projected objectives. For example, do you know the cost of sales for each of your product lines? Even if you're a service-based business, you have distinct lines and need to know what they cost to provide.

One school photographer I know keeps detailed spreadsheets of his preschool assignments. He knows exactly the average number of film frames exposed for each child; what payment envelopes and combs cost per each school; and what gross profit he can expect for each child enrolled in the school. He uses a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to post data from each photo session, and over the years he has built up a useful data history that helps him predict the future.

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