Financial Planning Template I

The Financial Planning Template I allows you to build your Profit and Loss (P&L) statement in a structured and automated way. You’ll be able to organize income and expenses into standard categories, calculate key profitability indicators, and track your financial performance across different accounting periods—monthly, quarterly, or annually. This tool is especially useful for assessing the viability of your business model, preparing reports for potential investors, and conducting more accurate financial planning.

By using this template, you’ll be able to:

• Systematically evaluate your business’s profitability
• Monitor revenue trends over time
• Identify and categorize key operating costs
• Calculate performance indicators (KPIs) like Gross Margin and EBITDA to assess business viability
• Communicate effectively with investors and stakeholders using a standardized financial statement

Detailed Breakdown of Template Sections

Before you begin, note that to ensure the template works correctly, you must only enter data in the designated rows. To help with this, we’ve added a guide column that uses symbols (+), (–), or (+/–) to indicate whether values should be positive, negative, or either. All other rows contain formulas and are calculated automatically—do not modify them.

1. Total Revenue (or Sales): Records gross income from core business activities. The template allows you to break down sales by product or service lines, adding as many as needed.
2. Variable Costs: Includes costs directly tied to production or service delivery. These are split into cost of goods sold (COGS)—such as raw materials, production, or acquisition—and other direct expenses that vary with sales volume, like sales commissions.
3. Gross Margin: Automatically calculated as the difference between total revenue and variable costs. It reflects the direct profit from each sale.
4. Fixed Costs: Covers essential operating expenses that don’t depend on sales volume. These include:
   • Personnel Expenses: Salaries, freelance fees, and social security contributions
   • Other Operating Expenses: Rent, accounting, legal services, advertising, utilities, etc.
5. EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization): Automatically calculated to show operational profitability, excluding financial and accounting costs. It’s especially useful for evaluating your business’s ability to generate profit from core activities.
6. Depreciation: Reflects the loss of value of company assets over time—e.g., machinery, electronics, or software.
7. EBIT (Operating Profit): Automatically calculated to measure profit from core activities after subtracting operating costs and depreciation.
8. Other Income and Expenses: Records financial movements not related to core business. This can be positive or negative and includes items like grants, investment interest, or asset sale gains on the income side, and loan interest, bank fees, or asset sale losses on the expense side.
9. Pre-Tax Profit (EBT): Final result before taxes, calculated automatically.
10. Taxes: Field to calculate corporate tax or personal income tax (IRPF) on profits. The applicable tax depends on your legal structure—corporations pay corporate tax, while freelancers pay IRPF. Make sure to apply the correct rate.
11. Monthly Result: Represents net profit or loss for a specific month. It’s a snapshot of short-term performance, calculated by subtracting all expenses and taxes for that period. A positive result means the month ended in profit; a negative result indicates an operating loss.
12. Cumulative Result: Offers a progressive overview. It sums all monthly results from the start of the year to date, smoothing out fluctuations. A positive cumulative result means the business is profitable overall; a negative one signals accumulated losses.

How to Interpret Results and Draw Conclusions

To get the most value from your data, it’s essential to interpret what the numbers say about your business’s health and performance. Here are the key profit levels to analyze:

• Gross Margin: Shows how much profit each sale generates before fixed costs. A high margin suggests your product or service is inherently profitable. A low margin may signal issues with pricing strategy or production costs.
• EBITDA: Reflects profit from core operations, excluding financing, taxes, and asset accounting. It’s a key indicator of cash generation capacity and highly valued by investors. A positive and growing EBITDA is a strong sign of operational health.
• EBIT: Unlike EBITDA, it includes asset depreciation. It offers a more conservative view of operating profit by factoring in the cost of maintaining productive capacity.
• Net Profit: The final bottom line. A negative result isn’t always bad for a startup—especially if it stems from planned growth investments like marketing, team expansion, or tech development. What matters is that the loss is controlled and part of a defined strategy.

Tips to Maximize the Template’s Value

• Analyze Margins: Review Gross Margin to ensure your product or service is profitable on its own. Use EBITDA and EBIT to assess operational health.
• Monitor Trends: Compare monthly sales growth against fixed costs. This helps verify whether revenue growth justifies your cost structure and whether investments (e.g., advertising) are paying off.
• Control Fixed Costs: Pay close attention to major expense categories like personnel and operating costs. Spotting deviations early is key to maintaining profitability.

Based on your analysis, use the data to make decisions. For example, if monthly results are consistently negative, examine which cost items can be optimized or whether pricing strategy needs adjustment. You can also use historical data and annual totals to set next year’s budget and define realistic financial goals.

Download and start using this template now to maintain rigorous, professional financial control of your business.

This tool is the first in a Financial Planning Kit. Coming soon, you’ll be able to complete your analysis with the Balance Sheet and Key Financial Ratios tools to provide a comprehensive view of your company’s financial health. Don’t miss them—check out the Tools and Templates section on the ONE Platform.