MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel
Chapter 10
Building a Business Planning Workbook
Pro forma financial statements—income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow state ments—usually constitute an integral part of business planning and the overall bud- geting process. Financial ratios are usually applied to these statements to assist both the builder and the user of the pro forma financial statements in assessing the strengths, weak- nesses, and performance of the business and the reasonableness of the model.
The business planning starter workbook (BIZPLAN.XLS), described in this chapter, pro- vides a framework to use in constructing pro forma financial statements and in applying ratio analysis to the pro forma statements. This starter workbook, with minor modifications, lets you apply ratio analysis to a set of existing financial statements. This chapter shows how to use the business planning starter workbook, modify it, and combine it with subsidiary spreadsheets.