Your Easy Entries for the PROFITS Center's Calculators
All of the PROFITS Center Calculators do their magic with just a few inputs from you, of things you already pretty well know, like sales margins and expenses.
Remember, you just need some assumptions, best-guesstimates, places to start.
And, since it works in real time, you will be able to see the "potential outcomes" immediately. This is especially useful once you have your first draft in, and are starting to make some tweaks and adjustments.
Change any of them at any time; immediately see the new outcomes!
MONTHS - Your plan can start with any month of a 12 month period, like the upcoming month! Or, do a calendar year schedule, and start with January. Whatever.
Select your Start month from the drop-down menu. It will set the appropriate labels for the other columns.
Estimated SALES - Enter @Retail, without sales tax. These are your estimates, your assumptions, “best-guesstimates” about what monthly sales might be. Just get some entries in to start; you’ll be tweaking as you go.
Here's the key: Round all entries to the thousands.
Examples: $42,385.22 becomes 42.4; $5,787.92 becomes 5.8; $385.33 becomes 0.4
GROSS MARGIN % - Enter estimated Gross Margin (Gross Profit) percent for each month of the 12 month period. (This is to calculate your Gross Margin % and your Gross Margin dollars.)
Enter maintained margin, after markdowns. Can be up to one decimal place (tenths of percent).
Examples: Enter 44, becomes 44.0%; enter 38.5, becomes 38.5%
EXPENSES - The PROFITS Center Calculators need just one entry for each expense "bucket."
Variable expenses are entered as a percent of sales. Use whole numbers to one decimal place
Examples: Enter 12.5, becomes 12.5%; enter 10, becomes 10%
Fixed expenses are a flat $ amount for each month. (Take totals for the year and divide by 12 to get an estimate of yours.) Round all $ entries to nearest thousand.
Examples: $8,673 becomes 8.7; $12,229 becomes 12.2