The restaurant industry is booming with industry sales of $799, employing 14.7 million individuals, and growing at an annual rate of 5.3%. People have to eat, and as eating out becomes more of a cultural norm, starting your very own restaurant begins presenting a vast amount of financial benefits.

First, in order to start/run your own restaurant, it will be necessary to create financial projections to show potential lenders or investors as well as for internal planning purposes.

That’s where we come in! ProjectionHub has been adding financial templates backed by Google Sheet revenue modeling for numerous business models onto our web application at ProjectionHub.com. This post will show you the process of utilizing this helpful tool to create customized and accurate financial projections!

Signup Instructions

1. Feel free to learn more about ProjectionHub in general before signing up.
2. You can sign up for a free trial by selecting the “Restaurant” template.
3. If you have any questions about the model as you go, please email support@projectionhub.com

General Business Info

Once you sign up and confirm your account you will be asked to complete some general business info as seen below:

Adding the Restaurant Business Model

Once you save the general business info, you will be able to add a business model.  If you don’t already see a Restaurant Business Model added on this page, you can click the add Business Model button as seen below to add your first Restaurant.

We have 6 different Restaurant business models for you to choose from, each with it’s own revenue model and customizable expenses:

1. Restaurant–General Model
2. Restaurant–Fast Food
3. Restaurant–Fast Casual
4. Restaurant–Casual Dining
5. Restaurant–Fine Dining
6. Restaurant–Bar

Revenue

Next you can click the orange button to Add Revenue to get started with your sales projections.

You will now have 2 options as you see in the image below:

1.  You can click “Add Revenue” which will give you the ability to add projected revenue numbers for each month for your restaurant.
2.  Or you can click “Add Google Sheet Revenue”.  We have created a special Google Spreadsheet template specifically for each Restaurant model that will give you more control in terms of adding assumptions for your average ticket price and number of customer orders each month.
3. If you decide to utilize our Google Sheet template please see this guide on how to enable the Google Sheet Integration.  You can see a screenshot of the Google Sheet below:

Expenses

Once you complete your revenue projections you can move on to your expenses.  There are 2 primary types of expenses:

1.  Startup Expenses
2.  Ongoing Operating Expenses

If you are creating a set of projections for a startup Jimmy John’s location, this list of startup expenses and ranges comes from Inc.com.

Some of the items listed as startup expenses should be entered as expenses on month 1 and some are actually cash spent on assets like:

• Leasehold improvements
• Equipment
• Buildings

If you have any of these types of expenses you will want to add them later as an “Asset” instead of an “Expense” on this page.

Operating Expenses

On the Expenses page in ProjectionHub you will be able to add/update your operating expenses.  You will notice that the Expense page will come with a number of standard expense line items along with a default monthly expense for most of the line items.  You can change any of these default expenses to reflect your specific situation.

Some expenses will be a % of your total sales, instead of a fixed monthly amount.

So as you see in the image above you can click the check boxes next to those expense categories and then in the drop down box you can select “Apply Industry Ratios” and then click “Apply”

Assets

Next you can move on to the assets section.  You will notice that the Assets page comes pre-loaded with the default assets that you might have as a Restaurant owner.

To add an asset, hover over the row, see the 3 dots on the left of the asset name, hover over, and click edit.

You can enter in the details of your assets as seen below:

Loans

Next you can move to the Liabilities page and add a loan.  If you are going to borrow to help fund your startup costs, you can “Add a Liability” as seen below:

Investors

Next you can add any personal investment you will be making as well as investment from outside investors.

Reports

Once you enter in all of your assumptions you will be able to review a number of reports.  Here is a sampling of some of the reports, tables below:

On the Dashboard page you will be able to download your projection Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow projections to share with your lender or investor.

Adding Multiple Restaurant Units

Finally, let’s assume you want to add another restaurant in the future.  All you need to do is go back to the “Business Model” page and add another “Restaurant” business model.  You can then label it Restaurant Unit 2 and you can repeat the process.  You can add as many units as you would like over time.

Again, you can get started by creating a ProjectionHub free trial account today.

As you complete your projections please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions at support@projectionhub.com or view our other financial templates including our cafe expenses spreadsheet and our small donut shop income template.

Good luck!

Are you starting or running your own private dental practice? If so, odds are you didn’t graduate college with a business degree, and you may be struggling with the financials of owning your own company. ProjectionHub is here to help!

We have developed a web application integrating revenue model dental office spreadsheets. This blog post will walk you through how to use the ProjectionHub web application to generate your financial projections, whether that be for lenders, investors, or simply internal planning.

Signup Instructions

1. Feel free to learn more about ProjectionHub in general before signing up.
2. You can sign up for a free trial by selecting the “Dental Practice” template.
3. If you have any questions about the model as you go, please email support@projectionhub.com

General Business Info

Once you sign up and confirm your account you will be asked to complete some general business info as seen below:

Adding the Dental Practice Business Model

Once you save the general business info, you will be able to add a business model.  If you don’t already see a Dental Practice Business Model added on this page, you can click the add a Business Model button as seen below to add your first Dental Practice unit.

Dental Practice Revenue

Next you can click the orange button to Add Revenue to get started with your sales projections.

You will now have 2 options as you see in the image below

1. Add Revenue
2. Add Google Sheet Revenue

1.  You can click “Add Revenue” which will give you the ability to add projected revenue numbers for each month for your practice.
2.  Or you can click “Add Google Sheet Revenue”.  We have created a special Google Spreadsheet template specifically for Dental Practices that will give you more control in terms of adding assumptions for your average price and number of patients each month.
3. If you decide to utilize our Google Sheet template please see this guide on how to enable the Google Sheet Integration.  You can see a screenshot of the Google Sheet below:

Expenses

Once you complete your revenue projections you can move on to your expenses.  There are 2 primary types of expenses:

1.  Startup Expenses
2.  Ongoing Operating Expenses

Some of the items listed as startup expenses should be entered as expenses on month 1 and some are actually cash spent on assets like:

• Leasehold improvements
• Equipment
• Buildings

If you have any of these types of expenses you will want to add them later as an “Asset” instead of an “Expense” on this page.

Dental Practice Operating Expenses

On the Expenses page in ProjectionHub you will be able to add/update your operating expenses.  You will notice that the Expense page will come with a number of standard expense line items along with a default monthly expense for most of the line items.  Obviously you can change any of these default expenses to reflect your specific situation.

Some expenses will be a % of your total sales, instead of a fixed monthly amount.

So as you see in the image above you can click the check boxes next to those expense categories and then in the drop down box  you can select “Apply Industry Ratios” and then click “Apply”.

Dental Practice Assets

Next you can move on to the assets section.  You will notice that the Assets page comes pre-loaded with the default assets that you might have as a Dental Practice owner.

To add an asset, hover over the row, see the 3 dots on the left of the asset name, hover over, and click edit.

You can enter in the details of your assets as seen below:

Dental Practice Loans

Next you can move to the Liabilities page and add a loan.  If you are going to borrow to help fund your startup costs, you can “Add a Liability” as seen below:

Investors

Next you can add any personal investment you will be making as well as investment from outside investors.  Simply go to the investors tab and click “add investor” and choose from our list of potential investor types:

Reports

Once you enter in all of your assumptions you will be able to review a number of reports.  Here is a sampling of some of the reports, tables below:

On the Dashboard page you will be able to download your projection Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow projections to share with your lender or investor.

Adding Multiple Dental Practice Units

Finally, let’s assume you want to add another Dental Practice in the future.  All you need to do is go back to the “Business Model” page and add another “Dental Practice” business model.  You can then label it Dental Practice Unit 2 and you can repeat the process.  You can add as many units as you would like over time.

Again, you can get started by creating a ProjectionHub free trial account today.

As you complete your projections please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions at support@projectionhub.com

Good luck!

Are you starting or running your own private medical practice? If so, odds are you didn’t graduate college with a business degree, and you may be struggling with the financials of owning your own company. ProjectionHub is here to help!

We have developed a web application integrating a Google Sheet revenue model specifically for medical practices. This blog post will walk you through how to use the ProjectionHub.com web application to generate your financial projections, whether that be for lenders, investors, or simply internal planning.

Signup Instructions

1. Feel free to learn more about ProjectionHub in general before signing up.
2. You can sign up for a free trial by selecting the “Medical Practice” template or view our in-home projection cost template.
3. If you have any questions about the model as you go, please email support@projectionhub.com

General Business Info

Once you sign up and confirm your account you will be asked to complete some general business info as seen below:

Adding the Medical Practice Business Model

Once you save the general business info, you will be able to add a business model.  If you don’t already see a Medical Practice Business Model added on this page, you can click the add a Business Model button as seen below to add your first Medical Practice unit.

Medical Practice Revenue

Next you can click the orange button to Add Revenue to get started with your sales projections.

You will now have 2 options as you see in the image below:

1.  You can click “Add Revenue” which will give you the ability to add projected revenue numbers for each month for your office.
2.  Or you can click “Add Google Sheet Revenue”.  We have created a special Google Spreadsheet template specifically for Medical Practices that will give you more control in terms of adding assumptions for your average price and number of patients each month.
3. If you decide to utilize our Google Sheet template please see this guide on how to enable the Google Sheet Integration.  You can see a screenshot of the Google Sheet below:

Expenses

Once you complete your revenue projections you can move on to your expenses.  There are 2 primary types of expenses:

1.  Startup Expenses
2.  Ongoing Operating Expenses

Some of the items listed as startup expenses should be entered as expenses on month 1 and some are actually cash spent on assets like:

• Leasehold improvements
• Equipment
• Buildings

If you have any of these types of expenses you will want to add them later as an “Asset” instead of an “Expense” on this page.

Medical Practice Operating Expenses

On the Expenses page in ProjectionHub you will be able to add/update your operating expenses.  You will notice that the Expense page will come with a number of standard expense line items along with a default monthly expense for most of the line items.  Obviously you can change any of these default expenses to reflect your specific situation.

Some expenses will be a % of your total sales, instead of a fixed monthly amount.

So as you see in the image above you can click the check boxes next to those expense categories and then in the drop down box  you can select “Apply Industry Ratios” and then click “Apply”.

Medical Practice Assets

Next you can move on to the assets section.  You will notice that the Assets page comes pre-loaded with the default assets that you might have as a Medical Practice owner.

To add an asset, hover over the row, see the 3 dots on the left of the asset name, hover over, and click edit.

You can enter in the details of your assets as seen below:

Medical Practice Loans

Next you can move to the Liabilities page and add a loan.  If you are going to borrow to help fund your startup costs, you can “Add a Liability” as seen below:

Investors

Next you can add any personal investment you will be making as well as investment from outside investors.  Simply go to the investors tab and click “add investor” and choose from our list of potential investor types:

Reports

Once you enter in all of your assumptions you will be able to review a number of reports.  Here is a sampling of some of the reports, tables below:

On the Dashboard page you will be able to download your projection Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow projections to share with your lender or investor.

Adding Multiple Medical Practice Units

Finally, let’s assume you want to add another Medical Practice in the future.  All you need to do is go back to the “Business Model” page and add another “Medical Practice” business model.  You can then label it Medical Practice Unit 2 and you can repeat the process.  You can add as many units as you would like over time.

Again, you can get started by creating a ProjectionHub free trial account today.

As you complete your projections please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions at support@projectionhub.com

Good luck!

Top Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

According to a report released by the Small Business Development Center Network there are approximately 82,000 salons in the United States alone.  If you are looking to start your own salon and seeking a business loan from the bank, they will probably ask you to complete a set of financial projections.

If the thought of a spreadsheet and financial model gives you a headache, then this article is for you!

Steps to Complete Financial Projections for a Salon

There are a number of things to consider as you develop your financial model.  The goal is ultimately to demonstrate to yourself and your potential financial partners like the bank or an investor that your Salon concept is financially viable and will generate positive cash flow.  Here is the process:

Step 1 – Choose your Business Model – Booth Rental vs. Employee Stylist Model

As you know, there are effectively 2 different financial models for a salon.  Either you rent booths to stylists who pay you the same weekly or monthly rent for their booth, or you employ the stylists.  I don’t need to go into the pros and cons of each model, this article already does a good job of that from the booth renter’s perspective.

From the salon owner’s perspective the booth rental model is less risky, but the upside potential is also much lower.  Whether you have the most successful salon in town, or the least successful salon, you will make about the same amount of revenue from the booth rental model, but if you are highly successful and the stylists are your employees you will make a much higher profit.

The ProjectionHub App has a template already built for you for both business models:

Step 2 – Build your Revenue Model

Once you decide on a business model, you will need to build out your revenue/sales model.  This process should essentially model how you expect to acquire customers, how much they will pay and how many will come back and how often.  Here is an example of how I would model both a Booth Rent Salon and a Commission Based or Employee Based Salon:

Booth Rent Salon Revenue Model

You will need to make the following assumptions:

1. What % of your booths will be rented at full capacity each month?
2.  How much do you charge for booth rent per month?
3.  How many booths will you have available for rent?

That is about all that you need to project your monthly revenue for a booth rent model.

Commission/Employee Based Salon Revenue Model

The revenue model for a salon where you employ the stylists and then pay them wages plus commissions is a much more complicated model, but also has the potential to be more profitable.  You will need to make the following assumptions:

1. What is your monthly marketing budget to attract new customers to the salon?
2. How much in advertising costs do you have to pay in order to attract 1 new customer?
3. How many “free” new customers will come to the salon each month that just hear about the salon through word of mouth?
4. What percentage of new customers will become “active” customers meaning they continue to return on a regular basis?
5. How often will an active customer visit the salon?
6. How much will an average customer spend per visit?

With these assumptions in hand you should be able to complete your revenue projections.  If you need some help actually building this out in Excel and creating custom financial projections for your salon, we can help, tell us more about your salon here and we can work to help!

Step 3 – Project Expenses as a Percentage of Revenue

There are essentially 2 ways that you can project expenses for a salon.  You can project specific expenses for various expense categories, but it may be easier to simply project your expenses as a % of revenue.

Step 4 – Add Business Loans or Investments

It is quite likely that the reason you are creating financial projections in the first place is because you are looking to get a loan or securing funding from an investor.  So you will definitely want to add your projected investment or projected loan into your projections.  With ProjectionHub you can add a loan and it will automatically add your monthly interest and principal payments into your projections for you.

Kabbage, and many other lenders, offer loans for salons specifically, you can learn more about their salon loan options here.

Step 5 – Gut Check your Projections Compared to the Industry

According to Small Business Trends the average net profit margin is 8.78% so if you are projecting a net income of 25% of your sales, you are probably way off base.

Step 6 – Go vs. No Go Decision

Once you complete your projections it is time for a go or no go decision.  A booth rent model is certainly less risky if you can find a handful of stylists to rent a booth at your facility,  you are in business.  You don’t have to worry about bringing in enough clients to keep stylists busy,  you don’t have to worry about

I just finished Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One and wanted to spend some time to review the book and put in writing what I have learned and how it relates to ProjectionHub.

First of all the book was excellent.  It was a quick read and it outlined a number of concepts that I have never heard or thought of in the past.  There were a ton of concepts that I thought were incredibly valuable for startup entrepreneurs.  Here were a couple concepts I noted and how they relate to ProjectionHub:

1.  Create a Monopoly – Much of Peter’s premise in this book is that in order to build a successful, sustainable, profitable company, you should look for opportunities to create a monopoly.  He explores several examples of companies that are large today that started by controlling a small niche market and then moved to other markets once they understood the model in a small market.  Examples include:

• Facebook started by dominating Harvard’s campus first then moved to other universities one a time.
• PayPal started by dominating payments for eBay power sellers
• Amazon started by dominating book sales

Taking this lesson to ProjectionHub I think we need to focus on creating the best financial model for one industry at a time.  Rather than trying to create a financial projection tool that is the best for everyone, create a great model for SaaS, then Mobile, then eCommerce etc.

2.  Think about Quantum Leap Improvements – Peter really pushes back against the Lean Startup philosophy which is to make small incremental improvements quickly.  He suggests that all of the great companies built a solution that was 10x better than the alternative.  For example, PayPal was 10x faster than paying by check for items on eBay.  Amazon had 10x the number of books than even your largest book store.

So at ProjectionHub we have to make sure that our financial projection tool is at least 10x as good as an Excel template.

I would definitely suggest that you pick up a copy of this book and learn some great counter intuitive concepts about taking your business from Zero to One.

One of the things I have learned over the past 2 years with leading ProjectionHub in our effort to build the “TurboTax of financial projections” is that a good set of financial projections must be built on a foundation of assumptions.  Those assumptions must be easy for a potential investor or lender to find, they must be easy to change, and they must be defended with data or reputable sources.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to build a product that will allow our users to do this, and it seems that the only good way to make this possible is to create standard models for each different type of business model.  A trucking company assumptions will be so different than a SaaS software company assumptions, that it really requires a “different” version of ProjectionHub.  

So now our challenge is to build a tool that can support bakeries to mobile app companies, salons to SaaS businesses.  

If you have ideas on features you would like to see with ProjectionHub, contact us at help@projectionhub.com

We are excited to announce some new features we have made available for business advisors, accountants and finance experts. Check out our new ProjectionHub Advisor account video.

Today we are very excited to announce that ProjectionHub 2.0 is now live, and is available for startup entrepreneurs and small business owners to use to create financial forecasts. One area that we have decided to support is business plan competitions. There are thousands of business plan competitions around the country each year, and many are hosted by universities. To help support this activity, we have made ProjectionHub free to use for any student with a .edu email address.

Simply choose one of our 3 financial projection options and use your .edu email address to sign up which will make all levels of the tool free for you. You will be able to create the following financial statements for your business plan competition:

• Up to 3 years of projected income statement
• Up to 3 years of projected cash flow statement
• Up to 3 years of projected balance sheet

And of course we are always here to help, so if you need some guidance as you work through your projections, or would like us to review your projections before your competition, simply shoot us an email to support@projectionhub.com.

Startups and early stage businesses are notorious for coming up with outlandish sales projections that they simply can’t execute.  Typically the problem revolves around building top down projections rather than bottom up projections.  What’s the difference?

Top Down Financial Projections

Top down projections take big numbers like industry sales figures, city populations, comparable business sales figures and simply guess that they can capture 1% of the market. There is no plan or data to backup the claim. The business owner simply thinks 1% of the market sounds easy enough, and uses the number as their sales projection. This is a great way to scare away every potential investor or lender.

Bottom Up Financial Projections

Bottom up projections are built around things like:

• Website Traffic
• Event Attendees
• Street Traffic
• Inbound Leads

Bottom up projections take real data from your specific situation as the base, and build upon that base.

Let’s take a coffee shop as an example. A top down sales financial projection of a coffee shop would look like this:

• There are 100,000 people in our city
• 15% drink coffee every day
• The average sales amount per visit is $3
• That means our annual market for coffee is 100,000 x 15% x $3 x 365 days = $16,425,000.
• If we can just capture 5% of that market we will have $821,000+ in annual sales!

This is great, but it doesn’t help you understand how you will capture your first customer, let alone, your 100th customer.

A bottom up approach for a coffee shop might look like this:

• Our coffee shop is at the intersection of the 2 busiest streets in town with daily traffic of approximately 15,000 vehicles.
• We know that only 15% of people purchase coffee at coffee shops
• All of them already purchase from a different coffee shop, so we will have to convert them as customers
• Because most customers are loyal to their coffee shop we estimate we might be able to convert 10% of the total number of coffee drinkers
• We will start by running local tv and radio commercials as well as placing c0upons in the local newspaper.
• We think these advertising efforts will convince (15,000 vehicles x 15% coffee drinkers x 10% potential customers) 225 customers to try our coffee during the first week.
• Because we are a local store with high quality coffee at a convenient location we believe we can convert 50% of those customers into returning customers.
• So our first month sales we estimate at (225 customers x 50% x $3 x 30 days) = $10,000 in sales month 1.

Notice the different methods and how the second method is more realistic.  Good luck!