A Model for Forecasting Small Business Financial Statements and Firm Performance

Forecasting financial statements and completing comprehensive financial analysis constitutes a considerable challenge for entrepreneurs. Students in various entrepreneurship, finance and accounting courses also face this challenge. This paper presents a spreadsheet template that assists entrepreneurs and students with this task. The template creates forecasted financial statements, a capital budget, calculations of firm value and ratio analysis. The template addresses specific considerations of start-up firms. The template provides flexibility that allows adaptions to various entrepreneurs and to meet learning objectives of courses at varying levels