Pro Forma Financial Statements: Main Types & How to Create Them

It represents the ownership stake of shareholders and provides insight into the financial health and value of the company. Subtract your COGS from your projected revenues to find your gross margin. This figure is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, showing you what’s left after covering the direct costs of your products or services.

We’re not going to cover exactly how to calculate cash because that’s what the cash flow statement is for, and we’re focusing on the pro forma balance sheet. A full-year projection factors in all of your financials for the fiscal year up until the present time. It then adds your projected cash flow outcomes for the remainder of the year. This allows you to showcase to partners or investors the potential of the business finances by the end of the fiscal year. Creating the balance sheet is a crucial step as it consolidates and summarizes the financial information for stakeholders to evaluate.

Creating a pro forma cash flow statement

Further, organizations may want to develop their pro forma financial statements while they are doing an annual review of their business plan. Investors and lenders use pro forma cash flow statements to evaluate a company’s financial viability before committing funds. These projections provide insight into how a business plans to use capital and generate returns, helping stakeholders assess risk and potential profitability. From gathering financial data and organizing assets to calculating liabilities and computing equity, attention to detail is vital. Accuracy and thoroughness are key throughout the process to ensure reliable and accurate projections. Calculating liabilities is a vital step in creating a pro forma balance sheet as it provides insights into a company’s financial obligations.

If you enable them, they have the best and worst-case scenarios that review the fiscal impact of their decisions and possible ways to mitigate risk. You could deliver to them two sets of pro forma financial statements, and two risk assessment templates to use to discover their best option. According to the SEC, for public companies, a pro forma balance sheet should have the same dates, plus one year from the last submitted balance sheet. If interim period balance sheets were submitted, the company should pick up from where they left off. If it is an annual period, the document should also align with the company’s filed GAAP-approved financial statements.

List Your Short-Term Assets

Make sure to choose a template that contains all the categories and information you need. When it comes to creating your own pro forma sheets, there are tons of tools you can use. From known software to specialized tools, each one has its own features to help with the task. Although it is recommended that you list all your current liabilities, if you find any values that are considered insignificant for the final calculation, you can leave them out of the list. They usually appear in a smaller quantity in the document, but the assets can have much higher values. ZenBusiness has helped people start, run, and grow over 800,000 dream companies.

Pro Forma Balance Sheet Template – Excel and Google Sheets

This article will show you how to make a pro forma balance sheet in Excel. We will project three years of financial statements for a startup business company. Financial professionals use these templates to model the impact of strategic decisions, such as mergers, acquisitions, or capital investments. By integrating pro forma cash flow statements into a 3-statement financial model, they can assess how changes in one area, like slower customer payments, affect overall cash flow. There are four main types of pro forma statements that you can use to manage your cash flows and the financial health of your business. There are strict guidelines when using GAAP while pro forma income statement figures are seen as hypothetical.

  • In summary, understanding how different transactions impact the balance sheet is crucial when creating your own financial model.
  • Embarking on the journey of creating a pro forma analysis can feel akin to preparing for a grand culinary adventure.
  • Or how will that proposed transaction of buying new equipment impact you long term?

Pro Forma Financial Statement

The pro forma income statement uses the traditional pro forma calculation method to make projections about quarterly or semesterly earnings. If you want to create a pro forma document, you should know that there are multiple types, each serving a different purpose and focus. We will show you some of the most used types of pro forma balance sheets.

It’s a crucial indicator of your business’s financial health and efficiency. Now you just need to calculate your final pro forma balance using the information provided in the previous items. It is a simple formula, and the calculations can be done in seconds or even automatically if you use the right software for creating your templates. Don’t forget that accounts receivables are also considered current assets and should also be included in this part of the template. Ensuring that you correctly listed each one of the items and their value will make it easier for the document to present you precise values at the end. The main focus of a pro forma invoice is to communicate business decisions regarding a specific service or product.

A pro forma financial statement is a way to forecast your future earnings over a particular period. By using historical financial statements and your projected cash flow, you can help determine how your business will perform in various scenarios. Firstly, we will create the income statement, then the pro forma balance sheet, followed by the cash flow statement.

Cash may seem underwhelming as our first example, but this is one of the conventions that make the balance sheet more difficult. We won’t even know if everything balances until the cash flow statement is complete. Even though cash is typically the first line item on the balance sheet, we don’t handle it first. Another simplistic way to think about a budget versus a pro forma is that a budget is a set plan while a pro forma is more of a prediction. It’s possible that your budget is based on the financial information that’s found in your pro forma statement. This makes sense, as you’ll want to make plans based on your predictions.

Remember that these values can drastically differ from the final results depending on the categories and calculation method. Pro forma financial statements come in various forms, each serving a unique purpose in your business planning. Pro forma statements don’t need to meet the strictest accounting standards, but must be clearly marked as “pro forma” and can’t be used for things like filing taxes. Using pro forma statements that aren’t marked as such to misrepresent your business to investors, the IRS, or financial institutions can be penalized by the Securities and Exchange Commission). The closing cash and cash equivalent calculated using both methods should be equal to the cash and cash equivalent balances in the pro forma balance sheet.

  • Knowing how the pro forma documents are compiled and what is left out is also critical when comparing different pro forma statements.
  • Think of it as the financial crystal ball that allows businesses to anticipate outcomes, plan for various futures, and make decisions today that will set them up for success tomorrow.
  • By following this step-by-step process, you can create a comprehensive and reliable pro forma balance sheet that accurately represents your company’s projected financial condition.
  • Overestimating assets can lead to overly optimistic equity calculations, akin to thinking you can run a marathon without training.
  • Then it merges them to show what your financials would have looked like if you made a business combination (or merger) earlier.

Pro Forma Balance Sheet Tutorial for Business With Examples

Creating a pro forma balance sheet is a fundamental step in financial planning and analysis for businesses. It offers a projected snapshot of a company’s financial position and plays a crucial role in decision-making processes. A pro forma balance sheet is a financial statement that showcases a company’s projected financial position based on certain assumptions and estimates. It provides a snapshot of a business’s assets, liabilities, and equity at a specific point in time, but with the inclusion of future projections. There are three main pro forma financial statements that businesses prepare.

In this paragraph, you should offer a high-level explanation of the limitations and assumptions the pro forma documents were produced under. For example, if your company recently acquired or dispensed with another company, the assumptions would be the changes in finance expected. The limitations should discuss the challenges of predicting the financial future of a company. You may be courting investors or trying to convince your business partners of the value of a capital investment or additional financing. In that case, you can use a financing pro forma projection how to create a pro forma balance sheet to make your case.

Pro forma statements typically project 1-3 years into the future, but this can vary depending on your business goals or the type of forecast needed. Publicly traded companies must use GAAP statements for official reporting to investors, regulators, and tax authorities, as required by law. These statements must follow strict accounting rules to ensure transparency and consistency. We will derive the amount of “cash and cash equivalents” from the cash flow statement, so keep it empty for now. On the other hand, if net cash flow is positive, you can plan on having enough extra cash on hand to pay off loans, or save for a big investment.

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