Baseline Numbers For Ongoing Companies

Chapter 6: Describe Your Company - Page 6.4

Baseline Numbers For Ongoing Companies

While we're focusing on the company description, let's establish some starting numbers that form the basis of your cash flow and balance sheet in the following sections. For ongoing companies, your starting balance for the future is the last balance from the past.

Past Performance for Ongoing Companies

Past performance explained here is for ongoing companies. If you are a start-up business, skip to the next section, Baseline Numbers for Start-up Companies.

Ongoing companies need to include a summary of company history, as a topic in your text. If you are an ongoing company, then you'll need to present financial results of the recent past, and this text section is where you explain them.

Explain why your sales and profits have changed. If you've had important events like particularly bad years or good years, or new services, new locations, new partners, etc., then include that background here. Cover the founding of the company, important events, and important changes.

Your first consideration is the needs of your reader. This isn't a history assignment. Give the reader of the business plan the background information he or she needs to understand your business.

The Past Performance table illustration on the next page shows a sample listing of recent financial results for an ongoing company. Generally three years is good enough. You should have these numbers as part of your standard business accounting. You can include them in the body of your plan, or as an appendix.

[Home] [Buy this Book] [Links] [About the Author] [About this Site] [Site Map] [Contact]