Model the future
In the last two articles I talked about what financial modelling is and how this is different to the kind of planning present in many business plan templates. Today I’m going to outline the practical side of how a financial model (and a Brixx model in particular!) can help bring clarity to business planning, as well as being a great asset in the long run.
Last time we looked at what a financial model is in general terms. So how does this compare to traditional financial planning? In small businesses and startups, planning often takes a back seat to hard work and the pursuit of new opportunities. When planning is done it tends to be quite different to modelling, but the data to do modelling is all there.
Brace yourselves! It’s a series of articles about financial modelling… beginning with a really important question:
“Why model?” is the question we pose ourselves before embarking on every new project. It’s a question that you might find yourself asking too if you’ve come across the term “financial model”.
Modelling is a specific kind of financial planning. There are plenty of financial planning apps and services out there, and many of them are really great. But very few true financial modelling tools are available, especially on a scale suitable for startups and small businesses.
We have been quietly working away on completely revamping the Brixx dashboard for a while now. We think it’s incredibly important to be able to visualise the future of your business. We’re trying very hard to make this simple and beautiful.
At the same time, we want to deliver something powerful that is really useful for analysing your cash flow forecasts, understanding your future costs and generally being aware of every part of your business.
Better Financial Forecasts
We have been hard at work with the App. Our goals have been to provide a better experience and more functionality for building your financial plan. This is just the start of many planned updates we want to introduce.
Startups can happen quickly
Or at least, they appear to from the outside.
The first business I was involved with was a startup in the UK. When I started writing my university dissertation the business just didn’t exist. By the time I handed in my 60 pages of literary analysis the company had been running for a month and I was lucky enough that they were looking for new content writers to join their team.
We’ve probably all worked for a variety of people, some good, and some not so good…but generally speaking, great leaders all share similar characteristics.
Effective and successful leaders of businesses inspire, motivate and lead their staff to working towards a common aim. With a clear vision for the business, staff will understand where the business is going, how they fit into that picture, and how the goals will be achieved.
When I first came to Brixx I didn’t know the first thing about finance.
But I did know something about small businesses and how they operated.
Within a week I was starting to understand that the Dark Art of accountancy wasn’t so dark, it’s just rarely explained in terms non-accountants understand. The reason why a balance sheet should balance, or the difference between retained earnings and opening cash is lost to most non-accountants. Business people and entrepreneurs see the world divided in different ways to the rules of accountancy.
Ah August! Schools are out here in the UK, which makes the journey to work all the easier. It got me thinking about the journey that we are taking with our development of Brixx.
Every project has fast and slow periods, but below silent waters there is a hive of activity. We haven’t released an update since our component update on the 7th July. As you can probably guess this means we’ve got something in store for you.