There should be a column for each month titled ‘forecast’. This is what your ‘guesses’ are for the months ahead. (The blue columns in the table above)
Income (the top section of the table above)
Input every different income stream you earn from, and put your estimates for each month in it.
So I have ‘Brand Partnerships’ ‘UGC’ ‘Affiliate Links’ etc.. and they all earn a different amount every month. So I’ve estimated this in the top section.
Things to think about:
Are you expecting to earn more as your business grows? Is there a certain brand that you’ll be able to work with in a few months? Is there a certain project you’re working on that you can release next week? Is there a certain time of the year where your sales will be higher?
Add it ALL to the spreadsheet.
Note: My earning prediction won’t always just be going up and up. There are some months that I forecast making less than the one before. For instance: if I am traveling I am able to spend less time working - so I predict that I will make less money.
Expenditures (the bottom section of the table above)
Underneath this you should make sure that you have your ‘forecasted outgoings’ too! This is what you spend every month!
So you should list every single thing that you spend for your business. Do you pay for a Canva subscription? How much do you pay for your Stan store? Domain? Microsoft Office? Add it ALL!
This is going to be pretty similar most months, because things like subscriptions’ usually stay the same. So usually my outgoings TOTAL will look the same every month.
You’ll notice that my name is actually included on the Drawings section. This shows that I actually pay myself a wage each month - as if I am an employee of Okay.Kara.Travels. So basically every month I will transfer a set amount from my business account to my personal account.
Forecast / Actual
You’ll notice that each month has two columns: one labeled ‘forecast’ and the other labeled ‘ actual.
Forecast = your guesses for each month.
Actual = what the month actually looked like.
It’s really important to compare your earnings to the forecast otherwise you could be living in fairy land. You might’ve written this forecast a few months ago, expecting to be earning a million pounds a month by now.. but when you actually check it’s nowhere near that amount. So make sure you keep updating it to realistic forecasts instead!
