Pro Forma Template Excel 2021: Top 4 Effective Guides And Tips That You Should Apply In Your Financial Statements
A pro forma template, sometimes referred to as a pro forma financial statement, is a document that acts as the foundation for income statements used in cash flow forecasting. Pro forma templates can also assist you make judgments based on hypothetical circumstances in the accounting world.
They can also assist you in developing a company plan, obtaining investor finance, and other tasks. You can prepare your financial documents faster and more uniformly every time you need them if you have a pro forma template on hand.
How to make a Pro Forma Balance Sheet with Excel
What Is A Pro Forma Excel Sheet?
Pro forma documents come in a variety of formats. They're usually employed to meet the bare minimum of accounting rules. Pro forma templates are designed to help you understand your company's financial health at a glance or when making presentations to board members and stockholders.
The following types of financial papers can be created using a template:
Income statements
Balance sheets
Cash flow statements
Owner’s equity statements
Customer invoices
Notes to financial statements
Annual pro forma projections
Investment projections
Risk analysis
While pro forma templates are simple to use, you should seek legal assistance from business lawyers to assist you in developing the correct set of templates the first time you design them. Check that some pro forma templates follow all applicable accounting regulations, such as GAAP principles and state laws.
To make an Excel spreadsheet from the start, you'll need a lot of time. You might have to spend a whole day preparing the spreadsheet if the formulas are complicated. As a result, even after several hours of work, the final product is delayed.
You can save time by using a pre-designed Excel template. The templates are mostly modifiable, allowing you to tailor them to your specific requirements. They are preformatted and include established formulas for specific calculation types, allowing you to concentrate on the work at hand.
How Do I Create A Pro Forma Template?
Step 1
Determine your company's sales predictions. You construct an appropriate pro forma statement, make sure to employ reasonable market assumptions. Determine a typical annual revenue stream, as well as cash flow and asset accumulation, by conducting research and speaking with experts.
Step 2
Calculate all of your liabilities and costs. Loans and credit lines are your liabilities. Your lease, employee pay, insurance, licenses, permits, materials, and so forth will be your expenses. The revenue estimates from Step 1 and the total liabilities and costs identified here will be used to generate the first section of your pro forma.
Put a lot of thinking into each expense during this period. This is an opportunity for you to assess whether all costs are required and where you might save money.
Step 3
Calculate the cash flows. This section of the pro forma statement forecasts your future net income, asset sales, dividends, stock issue, and so on. The second part of your pro forma financial statement is this section.
Step 4
Create the chart of accounts. This chart of accounts will be used to create a pro forma statement for a period of 3 to 5 years. Year one will be divided into monthly increments, while years two and three will be divided into quarters, and years four and five will be divided into annual increments.
Keep in mind that preparing Pro forma income and financial statements is largely a guessing game. To maintain accuracy, remember to update the projections in your pro forma on a regular basis.
Pro Forma Template Excel
How Do You Make Financial Statements In Excel?
When creating financial statements and reports in Excel, there are a few formatting standards to follow that will make the reports look more professional.
PivotTables Should Be Used
Because most reports are sent electronically in today's digital age, you should include Excel-based PivotTable reports that allow recipients to delve deeper for more financial information. I recommend sending Slicers in addition to PivotTables to allow the receiver to slice and dice the data (so to speak) to undertake more in-depth studies.
Make Use Of The Proper Alignment
To make row labels simpler to read, keep them aligned to the left. All text should be aligned to the left, and all numeric data should be aligned to the right. For improved readability, dates, percentage computations, and column headings should all be centered.
For Column Heads, Wrap The Content
For longer column heads, wrap text should be enabled to keep column widths as short as feasible, as shown in the wrapped vs. unwrapped column headings.
Titles Of Reports Should Be Aligned
The entity or organization, the title of the report, and the date range(s) for that report should all be included in the report title and title heading. Report titles can be centered or left aligned across the width of the report. For longer reports, I prefer to leave the titles left aligned so that they are visible on the recipient's screen without having to scroll to the right to read the entire title.
Use Bold Sparingly
Make your titles and column headings stand out by holding them, as well as subtotals and grand totals. However, avoid bolding your detailed facts because nothing is bold if everything is bold.
Color Should Be Avoided
For a variety of reasons, you should avoid utilizing color in your financial reports. To begin with, too many colors, with the exception of charts and graphs, might make your financial statements appear less than professional. Furthermore, if you choose a red font to represent negative numbers, it will not appear in black and white or on a black-and-white copier.
Furthermore, the color of the writing may make it impossible for the approximately 4% of the population who are colorblind to read it. Instead of using parentheses to represent negative numbers and credit balances, I advocate using parentheses.
Borders Should Be Kept To A Minimum
Borders that run the length of a financial report can make it more difficult to read. Simple single or double underlines separating column headings from data and framing subtotals and grand totals are usually all that's required.
Make Use Of The Green Bar Formatting
If you have a long report with a lot of columns that can be tough to read across the page, you might want to use a green bar accounting paper format to make it easier to read. In Excel, the ideal approach to achieve this is to format your financial report as a Table by choosing the data area to be formatted and then selecting Format as Table, Olive Green, Table Style Medium 4 from the Home tab.
Calibri Is The Font To Use
Calibri is a skinnier variation of the Arial font introduced by Microsoft in 2007. It was designed to make both numbers and text more legible, and the thinner Calibri font makes the numbers simpler to read on today's smaller mobile devices. While the ubiquitous Times New Roman font makes text easier to read, it is often thought to make numerals more difficult to understand.
Graphs And Charts
You should consider including charts and graphs in your reports since they are an efficient way to display intricate data in an easier-to-read format. While some CPAs prefer 2D charts since 3D charts might distort the data provided, I propose that your objective be to add charts that make the report bundle more interesting, even if that means a few colorful 3D charts. Take a look at the examples in the image below.
Are There Any Other Free Spreadsheet Programs?
Consider the following scenario: you've been asked to design a budget planner for a company. Integration formulas, formatting the sheet, and making it look professional are all required when creating it from scratch. Completing these processes can take a long time, and you may make mistakes when inserting formulas into the spreadsheet.
You can also download a budget templatethat includes the same formulas. You may have the budget planner ready in no time by adding a few adjustments to the template.
You may download and use Excel templates from most of the websites listed below without registering or checking in.
Excel Templates Gallery
When seeking for a template in any category, Excel should be your first destination.
The Excel resource library contains ready-to-use templates for business, charts, planners and trackers, lists, budgets, and financial management. You'll find a template that works for you no matter what profession you're in.
The top search bar also allows you to search for specific keywords. If you type "Income" into the search box, you'll get a long list of templates linked to that term.
Microsoft Templates
The second-best collection of templates is found in the Microsoft Office Resource Library. It, like Excel's resource library, has a good selection of chart, report, and tracker templates.
Spreadsheet123.com
Spreadsheet123 features a wide variety of Excel templates that are updated on a regular basis. The templates on this website are well-designed and professionally constructed. As with any website, you may browse the templates by category.
Vertex 42 Website
Budgets, invoicing, project management, timesheets, business, and many other templates are available from Vertex42.
Template.net
Template.net outnumbers spreadsheet123 and vertex42 in terms of template count. To download and use premium templates, you can pick between the PRO and Business packages on our page.
About The Authors
Steve Martins- I am a certified graphic designer and I earned my bachelor’s degree in Communication Design. I worked with many brands like Uniqlo and Huawei but also independent smaller Barcelonian brands like Caravelle and Madrid’s Hola Coffee and I have completed over 2000 projects in the last 5 years.