If you worry about money then some part of your brain is always devoted to this. Day in, day out. If you want to remove this wasted effort from your life you should use this tool.
If you gather the numbers from the right places this report can be very quick to update and the benefit immeasurable (depending on your level of concern about money of course).
Use total numbers for the month - simply take these from the “total debits and credits” from your bank statement. This is simple and holistic as long as you only use one main bank account for receiving and spending money. If you have more, sum the figures for all of them to get your rolled-up figures for the month.
Sales Projection = what you did last year + your gut feel for the market this year.
DO NOT spend too much time on this as it is a ‘guesstimate’ anyway. Err on the low side so your projection is conservative, you have confidence in the tool and if you do better than projected it will give you a boost!
Cost Projection = same as the previous months [provided you are not planning any major changes…]
Again, do not overthink this. Just use the figures from your bank statement if there are not large costs coming through. If you have seasonal expenses or occasional large expenses take the average of the last 12 months OR the average of the 3 corresponding months last year. For costs err on the high side so again if you do better than expected you will get a nice surprise
PLEASE NOTE: if you are doing it right this should only take you 5 mins a month to update [provided you are not running expensive projects or have large one-off bills coming in].
The benefits to your well being and decision making will be well worth the effort :)
