The disruption of COVID-19 and the current employment situation has given many aspiring entrepreneurs impetus to create a small business of their own.
But the adverse effects of coronavirus are also becoming apparent for those who have already taken the leap. The North West has reported the largest usage of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme outside of London and the South East and has also made strong use of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme.
As the first two years after creating a start-up are the hardest – and are predicted to be more difficult in this rocky climate – getting all the free advice and guidance you can is invaluable to the success of your business.
Sage, a market leader in cloud business management solutions, has created a free, downloadable small business toolkit to help, including a guide, business plan template and cashflow forecast.
Here’s how each section can help the success of your small business.
The information guide
This 21-page guide is like a welcome booklet into the world of entrepreneurship. It contains actionable ways to keep your business afloat within the first crucial months and years. In it, you’ll find three sections:
- Increase sales and generate cash: this includes how to identify and sell to new and existing customers; expand your product or service offering; tools to target customers; growing into new markets and ways of generating cash, such as finding investors or raising funds.
- Monitoring and fixing issues: here you’ll find how analysing data can help you highlight what’s working well and what could be improved in your business; developing your competitive advantage and how to shorten your cash cycle to get paid quicker.
- Seeking help: businesses aren’t created in a vacuum, so Sage has relayed programmes and organisations that can help you, such as crowdfunding and support helplines as well as the types of advisors you can look into hiring.
Business plan template
A business plan is probably one of, if not the, most important document you will write for your business. It’s essentially a blueprint for your start-up and contains all the information that shows investors or new business partners your brand’s potential.
While a business plan is unique to your business, they usually include the following sections:
- Business summary
- Goals
- Organisational structure
- Business operations
- Market analysis
- Financial analysis
Each section should be around 5-pages long, which should make your business plan around 20-40 pages. Filling in this level of detail can be daunting, so the template by Sage coaches you through each section with descriptions on how to fill each part in accurately. It’s also completely customisable, so if certain sections don’t apply you can remove them.
Cash flow forecast
A cash flow forecast allows you to plan finance arrangements in advance and shows lenders or investors how much money you’re likely to have going in and out of the business from month-to-month. Alongside a business plan, it’s one of the key indicators of how your business will survive for the next year.
If your cash flow forecast isn’t accurate, it might lead lenders or investors to wonder what else is inaccurate in your business projections, so it’s imperative that this document is precise.
The downloadable forecast from Sage outlines what you need to think about when making your predictions and how to be realistic about your forecasting, with a separate tab for expected vs actual payments for you to complete.
With these documents in hand, you should be well on your way to creating a successful small business. If you’re thinking about creating a start-up or have got the ball rolling already, you can download Sage’s small business toolkit here.
