Expenses and Capital Requirements

By creating a financial form called Operating Expenses, you pull together the expenses incurred in running your business. Expense categories include: marketing, sales, and overhead. Overhead includes fixed expenses such as administrative costs and other expenses that remain constant regardless of how much business your company does. Overhead also includes variable expenses, such as travel, equipment leases, and supplies.

This form details the amount of money you will need to procure the equipment used to start up and continue operations of your business. Capital Requirements also includes depreciation details of all purchased equipment. To determine your capital requirements, think about anything in your business that will require capital. For a diaper delivery service this might be a van, washing machines and dryers, irons and ironing boards, and supplies. Manufacturing companies obviously require more equipment for production. This equipment can fall into three categories: testing, assembly, and packaging.

For a manufacturing company, the cost of goods is the cost incurred in the manufacturing of the product. For a retail or wholesale business, the cost of goods (sometimes called the cost of sales) is the purchase of inventory. To generate a Cost of Goods table, you need to know the total number of units you will sell for a year as well as what other inventory you have on hand, and at what stage of production those units exist. For a manufacturing company, the cost of goods table will include materials, labor, and overhead related specifically to product manufacturing.