Here’s Your 2017 Quick Planning Template

Written by Mike Shapiro | | October 13, 2016

You’ve been thinking about it. You know you’ve got to do it…soon. Most companies’ annual planning process starts in October.

It’s important to get an early start looking at what your revenue’s going to be next year and where it’s going to come from — which products and services and which customers — and what you’re going to do to manage expenses.

Whether you’ve got a formal home-grown process, use one of the commercially available planning packages or just a yellow pad, don’t put it off. Get started now using this quick and easy format. It’s just a few questions you ask yourself, followed by entering some numbers for each of the line items borrowed from IRS Form 1040 Schedule C:

Company Overview

  1. What products and services do we expect to sell and in what amounts?
  2. How can we do more with existing customers?
  3. How can we find more like our best customers?

Staff and Resources

  1. Who are our key staff members?
  2. What talents and resources do we have that our competitors don’t?
  3. In what ways do our differentiators actually make a difference when it comes to getting and keeping clients?

Environmental Scan

  1. What’s going on in our industry? Who’s buying what, from whom and why?
  2. Where do our competitors have us beat? What can we do about it?
  3. What opportunities exist for us to enter new markets?

Marketing

  1. How are we getting our message out?
  2. Is it good enough? Do we need to do more?
  3. What’s our web presence doing for us? How can it be improved?

Regulatory

  1. What legal and regulatory barriers exist?
  2. Do any new constraints in our industry offer some hidden opportunities for us?
  3. Is there a way to use audits and inquiries of oversight bodies as a way to take a fresh look at what we do and why, and help us do things better?

Key Relationships

  1. Who are our investors, joint venture partners, suppliers, vendors, landlord?
  2. Are these relationships moving us in the direction we want to go?
  3. Are our written contracts with them up-to-date and consistent with the expectations of how we want to work together?

Deliverables and Milestones

  1. What are our big objectives for 2017?
  2. What will we see and hear along the way that will tell us we’re making good progress?

Financial Modeling  (for a handy checklist use the line items from IRS Form 1040, Schedule C). Once you have listed your items of revenue and expense, here’s a rough calc of what your plan will look like:

  • Expected revenue
  • Less: Cost of goods sold (inventory at beginning of year + purchases + materials and supplies + labor – inventory at end of year)
  • = Gross profit
  • Less business expenses
  • = Net profit

Get started now! Good luck!