Ecommerce is similar to other types of business. It needs money to start it. You may hear a lot about how to make money online by just using a free website or blog. However, if you want to start an online business seriously, and make a big profit, you need a budget to do that. The fee for creating a professional website, pay the shipping company you are going to work with, and many more are some of the elements of e-commerce.
Therefore, the key and the first thing you need to do before you start e-commerce is creating a proper financial plan. It helps you to know the direction and what kind of preparation you need to do to face the competition. Now, if you want to create a financial plan for e-commerce, here are things you need to put in your plan.
Expenses Budget
Ecommerce run by using two different types of budget, which is the permanent cost and variable cost. The permanent cost is the money you spend to pay for website hosting and domain, rent fee for your office, payroll for your employees and many more. It means that this is the cost you need to spend regularly and continuously at the fixed time, while your e-commerce is still up and running.
The variable cost is the money you spend on operating your business project. For example, you may need to pay for advertising for your new product. This one is considered to be the variable cost. And, do not forget to include the business taxes and interest rate. Nowadays, there is already the law that regulates the online business, including the implementation of the tax on it.
Sales Prediction
Set the projected sales number you want to reach within several time ranges, such as the first year, first three years, monthly or quarterly. It requires a lot of researches, especially how your competitor go around and market condition, plus the trend prediction, for several years in the future. Once you get all that data, you can see whether your goal is reachable on time.
You also need to know that e-commerce change rapidly according to trend. Therefore, you might need to shorten the projected sales goal to get the exact number that your e-commerce can attain. It ensures that you won’t lose too much over the early year of your e-commerce enter the competition.
Break-even Analysis
It is similar to the sales prediction. However, it is more to the practice you are going to do to reach the sales goal. The purpose is to find out whether your e-commerce sales can match the expense you spent when you started it.
This part has a strong relation to the type of product you sell in your online store. The digital product, such as e-book, games, and software, maybe has lower difficulty than a physical product. The main reason is you don’t need to calculate the physical area (warehouse) for storing your product. And, the shipping process also can be done fully online. So, by planning simple marketing, you can easily get a better result for this product.
On the other hand, physical products need more attention. Warehouse and shipping service is one of the important elements to consider here. However, you also need to calculate the change of trend that might happen in the future. Changing the physical product to match the trend is not an easy task. Therefore, you need to calculate the amount of physical product you make. Then prepare for the next batch of the product following the next trend.
Using the Financial Plan Template for Ecommerce
As you can see, preparing the financial plan for e-commerce is something that can be complicated. Even though there are only three main elements you need to ensure, the detail will take time to finish and make it perfect. This is where a financial template for e-commerce helps you a lot.
The financial plan template gives you a platform to put your plan easily. Furthermore, it also helps you to predict, analyze and calculate all elements much faster. With it, you can easily make a proper and perfect financial plan, before you start your e-commerce. So, when you are ready with your budget and plan, your e-commerce can make its first run in the online business world, smoothly.
Financial planning keeps pestering you with your performance and development. Your graphs will continue to spur you on to greater and higher revenue earnings. It also aids in keeping track of your financial progress, as well as staying in touch with your objectives. Take the help of High Lift Financial for better financial planning.
Conclusion
Preparing a good financial plan for e-commerce is important. Furthermore, using the best financial plan template can help you to create that good plan. If you want to get the template, you can always use the service by Efinancialmodel.com.
