Create Small Business Plan With This Bookkeeping Template (Free)
You are ready to kick off your business plan for the new year! Is there any small business plan template available for keeping track of your business? Yes! I have a gift for you – a free bookkeeping template!
Per my own experience managing accounting and finance for years, it is completely possible for small business owners to learn and do bookkeeping themselves when the business is simple or at the beginning. If budget allows, you can of course hire accountant, but I highly recommend basic literacy of accounting and bookkeeping, so that you can choose the right accountant(s) and understand what they do for your business.
I created a bookkeeping template in Excel and Google Sheets for small business owners to either record their transactions or draft simple financial plan. The template is FREE and beginner-friendly.
To get the template:
- Fill in the form below by selecting the version you prefer (no spam)
- The template of your chosen version will be in your email within 24 hours!
In this post, you will read:
- How to use the bookkeeping template
- How to use the bookkeeping template to generate a financial plan
How to Use the Bookkeeping Template
There are 4 tabs in the template: Setup, Revenues, Expenses, and Dashboard.
1. Setup
We will start with the “Setup” tab.
Please note that cells with background in white contain formula to automatically populate information. Do not change those cells. You only need to fill in information in the cells in pink.
START DATE: input the first date of the month your business starts during the year. For example, if you business starts on February 9, 2024, input 2024-02-01. The template will automatically fill in the fiscal year, months and years for other setups once you enter the starting date.
CURRENCY SYMBOL: pick the currency your business operates in from the drop-down menu. The drop-down menu includes all currency symbols.
FISCAL YEAR: the fiscal year is automatically populated based on the start date you enter. The fiscal year is the calendar year in which the 12th month of the fiscal year is. For example, the 12th month for a business starting in February 2024 is in 2025, so 2025 is the fiscal year.
REVENUE STREAMS: this is where you input how do you categorize your revenue. You can enter your service types. For instance, for a contractor company, power wash project, window cleaning project, etc.. Alternatively, you can categorize based on the channels, as the example shown.
Categorizing revenues can have significant impact on business scaling. For example, if you mingle the revenues of different projects or channels in the beginning, it will be hard for you to get the information about the scaling of a particular type of project or channel.
1. Which is more important for you to focus to grow sales? Product types, delivery channels, or any other factors? A contractor company may categorize its revenues into power washing, window cleaning etc. while an e-commerce company may categorize its revenues by sales channels. Other way could be by client type or by revenue pattern (recurring revenues or project-based revenues).
2. If more than one dimension you prefer, think about which dimension helps the investors assess your business better and use that as level 1 dimension. Take the contractor company as example again, the owner wants to categorize by the project type and the client type (e.g. resident and business). I would choose client type as level 1 dimension, then under each client type, I list different project types. Because for a contractor company providing cleaning services, who they serve affect MUCH MORE their pricing strategies and thus margin.
3. Use public companies in your sector as the benchmark. The accounting practice of public companies has experienced lots of scrutiny and therefore, it can serve as your best reference. If you cannot decide how to categorize, pick a public company in your sector and copy their categorization methodology.
EXPENSES CATEGORIES: this is where you input your expense categories.
You may be temped to categorize expenses according to expense types, but I highly recommend categorizing the expenses according to the business functions, a way that will better support your business scaling.
I used to lead the finance team of a tech firm that planned to scale. But the owners set the expenses by types. For example, regardless the business functions the employees were in, everyone’s travel expenses were grouped under Travel Expenses; so as the credit card, telephone expenses, etc..
As a result, their accounting book could not answer critical questions about scaling, for instance, how much did it costs to acquire one client. Although the salaries were categorized by teams, but mere salaries were insufficient to answer the question.
Then I helped them to re-organize the accounting system by re-categorizing the expenses by functions, such as operations, sales and marketing, R&D, Product, Management, IT, Admin, etc.. Note that these functions are common for technology companies. Companies in different sectors will have different business functions.
If there were any employees working cross functions, I allocated the expenses according to the average time the employee spent on different functions. For instance, the team lead of R&D spent 20% of his time in the Product team; therefore, all of his expenses, including salaries, travels, telephones, credit card spending etc., will be split into 80% for R&D and 20% for Product.
MONTHLY REVENUE GOALS: once you finish the categorization, you can think about the revenue goals you are trying to hit per month. You can simplify the process by dividing your annual goal by 12. But if your business has clear seasonality (e.g. sales boost during Christmas), it’s better to set goals according to the seasonality.
MONTHLY MARGIN GOALS: the reason I set up margin rather than a hard number for the target profit, is because margin is easier to benchmark your business with other businesses and the industry average. That is why margin is what investors will, and thus business owners should, consider.
SUMS OF GOALS: the annual revenue and profit goal are the sums of your monthly goals. The annual margin equals to annual profit goal / annual revenue goal.
2. Record revenues
Once you finish the setup, you are ready to record your revenues and expenses in the according tabs. Let’s start with the Revenues tab.
On the top, you will find the calculated sums of revenues, sales taxes, net revenues, how many rows of sales, average revenue per sales, and average sales tax rate.
The number of rows of sales and the average revenue per sales are more applicable for business that will enter every single sale. Contractor companies fall into this category. However, it is less relevant for businesses that will enter the sums of sales per day per categories. For instance, e-commerce as the example shows.
On the bottom you have the table in which you will enter your sales items. You need to manually enter the date, the revenues including the sales tax, sales tax, and reference or notes if you like to use. You can select a revenue stream that you set up in the Setup tab. And the currency symbol is also picked up based on your setup. Last but not least, the net revenues are automatically calculated.
3. Record expenses
The Expenses tab is very similar to the Revenues tab.
On the top, you will find the sum of expenses, taxes from expenses that you can use to deduct the sales tax, total net expenses, how many rows of expenses, average expense per item, and average tax rate for the expenses.
On the bottom you have the table in which you will enter each of your expenses. You need to manually enter the date, the total expenses including the tax, tax, and reference or notes if you like to use. You can select an expense category that is set up in the Setup tab. And the currency symbol is what you select on the Setup tab. Lastly, the net expenses are automatically calculated.
4. Dashboard
How can a small business plan template miss visualization? The Dashboard tab is to summarize and visualize the data your revenues and expenses.
The date on the top is the today’s date, or the last date of the fiscal year, whichever is earlier.
In the tables on the top, you have the sum of revenues, expenses, and profits. You can also find your completion percentages of revenue and profits compared to the target revenues and profits. Note that the target revenues and profits sum only for the months you have enter revenues. In the example, there is data only for February and March, the sums of the targets also include only February and March.
Below the tables on the top is the trending analysis of your revenues and profits. The monthly goals are included in the trending analysis for you to compare.
On the bottom of the dashboard list the monthly revenues, profits, and expenses. The monthly targets are adjacent for comparison purpose.
This is a simple but practical bookkeeping template for small business. You can also use it as a small business plan template to generate financial plan.
How to use the bookkeeping template to generate a financial plan
You can treat this bookkeeping template as a small business plan template. The process is simple. Firstly, you follow the same process to complete the setup of the start date, currency symbol, revenue streams and expense categories
Then remove the monthly goals of revenues and profits; instead, input your monthly goals of revenues to the Revenues tab. In the Expenses tab, you will enter your projected expenses.
Projecting revenues and expenses requires more endeavor than simply setting a goal. For example, you need to think about what are the components in your monthly revenue goal of $1,000. To realize this $1,000 revenues, what kind of expenses will occur? Maybe like shipping, and packing material expenses.
You can learn more about the financial projection with an example in the post: How to Use the 3 Financial Statements in Your Business Plan
One benefit of this bookkeeping template is that you can enter different lines of revenues and expenses for the same month, and the dashboard will sum them up by month for you.
Once you finishing the information entry, copy and paste, screenshot, or directly link the graphs and tables in the Dashboard to your business plan in Word doc or PowerPoint slides.
Summary
This is how to use this little bookkeeping template as your small business plan template. Should you have any questions, you are welcome to leave a comment.
The template is practical. But if you want to find bookkeeping templates that are more robust in data entry and in data visualization at affordable prices, you are welcome to visit my little shop:
