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Spreadsheets have proven to be very helpful in business operations. Not only does it help manage and analyze data for daily business operations, but it is also beneficial for forecasting sales in making crucial business decisions.
Your company’s sales team and the finance and accounting department create sales forecasts using Excel spreadsheets. A sales forecasting template helps them have an overview of how much sales your company can generate in the future.
If you are looking for sales forecasting templates that can help you with your daily business activities, check out Simple Sheets’ vast collection of sales and marketing templates that are highly customizable and professionally made.
How Can a Microsoft Excel Template Help With Sales Forecasting
All businesses aim to reach a certain profit level. They do this by analyzing their sales data regularly. However, aside from this, they can also improve their income by doing sales forecasting.
Sales forecasting is a process where the business estimates future sales and predicts the company’s short and long-term sales performance. Sales forecasting is an important process for businesses because it provides valuable information regarding sales trends to help them make informed decisions.
Sales forecasting gives a general financial overview of your company following historical data points and previous sales revenue. Sales forecasting is also important in predicting company growth, managing the production schedule, and at the same time, managing cash flow.
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets can be used to create sales forecasts by offering several ways of financial forecasting. The spreadsheet is easy to use and share.
Excel Templates to Help With Business Innovations and Predicting Trends
There are several Excel templates that you can use to aid you with several business activities, such as predicting sales trends and creating business innovations.
Below are some useful templates that you can use for your business:
1. Sales Forecasting Template
You can use a sales forecasting template to help you create a business budget, business plan, and risk management plan. This template is excellent for tracking business sales, forecasting sales revenue, and planning your company’s future sales growth.
Sales forecasting can be a challenging task. However, if you have the right tools, such as a sales forecasting template, the whole process becomes more accessible and more engaging.
2. Marketing Budget Template
Every business has its own marketing budget allocations. These budgets differ from one business to another. Marketing teams need to align all budgets with the company goals.
Aligning the budget helps minimize unnecessary expenditures. You can properly plan your business’s future with a marketing template. This template can help guide a project manager and the team to avoid overspending.
3. Sales Revenue Analysis Template
The sales revenue analysis template helps you track and monitor the fast-moving products of your business. Using this template and applying the concept of sales revenue analysis, you would know which products should be continued and improved and which need to be pulled out from the market and discontinued.
You can use a sales revenue analysis template to track all your products’ income-generating potential. This template also allows you to compute and compare each product’s revenue.
This template gives you a general project overview and predicts trends to create wise business decisions. A sales revenue analysis template includes a heading section, sales data, graphical elements, and revenue percentages. This template is compatible with Google Sheets and OpenOffice.
4. E-Commerce Business Model Template
An E-Commerce business model template is a must-have if you have an online business. This template can predict trends and project sales by estimating how much each product costs, shipment, and margins.
This template can take into account both the conventional sales of products as well as digital products. This template also considers the changes that can happen in the market yearly, such as inflation and other fluctuations.
5. Marketing Plan Template
A marketing plan template is perfect to be used by marketing teams in tracking deliverables. With this template, you can break down complex tasks, assign due dates, track sales and expenses, and much more.
You can align all initiatives with the company’s main objectives using a marketing plan template. This template can streamline the overall purpose of your business, set strategic goals, set performance standards, determine the target market, and ensure a definite plan of action.
6. Action Item Template
An action item template is commonly used in project management. This template can manage actions or tasks assigned to each team member, which must be accomplished on the due date.
The action item template consists of action items, due dates, and other important notes relating to the tasks or actions. This template encourages accountability between team members and clarity and efficiency in business activities.
You can use the conditional formatting functionality to streamline tasks and break them down into simpler tasks. You can customize your action item template to suit your needs and preference.
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7. Blog Editorial Calendar Template
If you are talking about innovations and trends in digital business, blogging plays a significant role in generating customer leads and sales Your blog should be up and running, regularly updated, and optimized.
Reality speaking, managing a blog can be challenging. You may struggle with consistency, organization, and not knowing when to post your blogs. Hence, a blog editorial calendar template is a great way to monitor your blog posts and refocus all your efforts to generate more traffic to your site and content leads.
Using this template helps you track and manage your business content. You will become more conscious of your article topics, keyword inclusions for optimization, and CTA alignment.
8. Data Envelopment Analysis Template
Using the data envelopment analysis template, you can perform and compute for environmental analysis. This template helps identify trends, determine best practices, goal setting, proper resource allocation, and monitor business efficiency.
Key Takeaways
Excel spreadsheets offer many functionalities that are useful for daily business operations. The use of spreadsheet templates has been very helpful to many businesses. Templates increase business productivity by reducing the time spent creating spreadsheet content.
Spreadsheets will always be a well-loved program and a go-to tool for many businesses because it is very functional. The future of spreadsheet templates, trends, and innovations is great and will continue to be so.
