Serious Business Class 6 Overview

Objective of the class

This class will review some of the specific work that you have started in writing your plan and try to put a framework around writing a business plan.

Review each of the "Key Ideas" in the section below.

Homework -- Essentials of Accounting

Read Part 6 in Essentials of Accounting. Do the review at the end of the chapter.

This Chapter is all about Inventory and Cost of Sales. Understand how Inventory effects Cost of Good sold for the period.

Understand how a perpetual inventory is kept in the accounting records. Not the physical inventory, but the dollar inventory.

What is the assumption for the value of the inventory on the books. What is FIFO, LIFO and SAYSO?

What is the calculation for Inventory Turnover?

When does the cost of inventory get included as an expense?Bear Paw

Key Ideas

Key Concepts for Business Plan Class 6

  • Outline of Your Business Plan
    • Now it's time to do the real work. Putting together a specific business plan with specific objectives and strategies. To help me alleviate my confusion in looking at all the various outlines of business plans on the web, I decided to concoct my own. Here's the outline in Word Format. Please download and print out some working copies.Read More>>
    • Part of the reason I pulled together my own outline is that most outlines that are suggested are developed to raise money. The focus of this outline is operational. One of the shortcomings of fund raising outlines is a complete lack of objectives, strategies and tasks. To me that's one of the most important parts of the plan. It shows you where you are going and how you expect to get there.
  • The How To of Drafting a Business Plan
    • Writing a plan is a major undertaking. It's real easy for me to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. To accomplish something, I need to divide the major task into smaller bight size chunks. This outline is designed to do just that. Take one section at a time, decide the key points you want to address in the section. Then quickly write what comes to mind. You can edit and revise later. Attempt to get the points down that you want to make.
    • Try to tell a story. Keep a specific person in mind when you are drafting. Answer the question...What am I trying to tell ____ about this topic? You will notice that the outline supports the story of A. Here's where we are. B. Here's our Overall Goals and Objectives [What we want to accomplish in the Plan Period]. C. Here the Markets and Marketing Strategy to be able to achieve our goals. D. Here's what we will do in operations to achieve the goals. E. Here's how we deal with the Administrative and Financial aspects of reaching our goals. F. And, finally, here's the specific financial projections to reach our goals.
  • Reviewing the Situation Analysis
    • In the last two classes, we started writing some of the parts that we will need to complete your business plan. Let's review the "Situation Analysis" parts that you have started and place them in this outline. Then let's review where we will put some of the markets, and marketing strategy elements we began to draft. Now, where are the holes that we need to fill in....
  • Writing your business plan

    • Let's review one of the articles in Class 2. This is the article about how to write the business plan.

      Most of the advice you need to write a good business plan is about gathering and organizing the relevant information. But even if you have this part right, almost all business plans fail to impress because of the language and style used. Your business plan needs to be a model of clarity and easy reading so your audience can concentrate on the message. Read More >>

    • Here are some specific sections to review: