Note: all examples on this page are simplified for ease of presentation.

This six-month projection is for one product, wreaths (row 2), for a fictitious company owned by someone we'll call Aretha.

Aretha enters the information in the blue cells, and the projection spreadsheet calculates the rest.

Line 4 shows projected units sold. Lines 6 and 9 enable Aretha to enter individual prices for each month. This gives her maximum flexibility for projecting gross profit.

Seasonal Spikes

This graph shows the projected gross profit for three products over a 12-month period. Note how seasonal differences can help Aretha plan for ordering raw materials, inventory and/or temporary staffing.

View by Category

This spreadsheet illustrates three features: a 12-month layout, products grouped by category and the ability to model changes in price every month. The categories are sales starting on row 7, costs on row 13 and gross profit on row 18. As with the first example, every month Aretha can change units sold in her projection using lines 4 and 5, and prices using line 8.

View by Product

This projection has information arranged by products. This allows all activity on each product to be viewed separately. The first product, wreaths, begins on row 4, and the second one, baskets, on row 11. Totals are from rows 18-21.

Another View

Another look at gross profits. Area graphs give Aretha a better sense of the overall gross profit activity of the products compared to each other.

Service Projection

Service companies have a different twist. The "unit of sale" typically is an hour or a day. The example here uses the hour.

The information projected for each employee is hours worked, the employee's hourly rate, a percent to account for the overhead (taxes and benefits, for example) and the hourly cost (hourly rate accounting for the overhead).

Following that is the assigned billing rate from which the projected sales is calculated (hours x billing rate). The projected cost of sales is hours x hourly cost, so the gross profit is projected sales less projected cost of sales, from which the gross profit percent is calculated.

The totals for the two people are calculated and shown in rows 27-30.





 
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