Financial Management | Edible-Alpha® Learning Center

Forecast Templates

Free forecast templates by Edible-Alpha®

These helpful templates help you build your financial projections, including, your sales and distribution forecast; cost of goods sold (COGS) and other expenses forecasts; capital expenditures forecasts; and your accounts receivable (AR), accounts payable (AP) and inventory forecasts. These projections can help inform your proforma financial statements.

Tool or Template about Raising Capital for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups | Growing and Scaling

Gary Hirshberg Stonyfield Organic On Taste Radio

Growing Organically With Stonyfield Farm Co-Founder Gary Hirshberg (Taste Radio Podcast)

1 hour & 20 minutes of Free audio by Taste Radio Podcast

The founders of Stonyfield were running a nonprofit organic farming school on a small New Hampshire farm when they began what became Stoneyfield farms. After starting with seven cows, now Stoneyfield sells hundreds of millions of dollars per year in dairy and other products in supermarkets, natural food stores and colleges across the country.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

How A Bank Can Strengthen Farming Communities Through Innovative Lending

1 hour & 10 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Ephrata National Bank in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is a $1 billion community bank with 25% of their portfolio funding agricultural entrepreneurs. Lending to support new business models or premium offerings (like value-added processing) can help farmers deal with high land prices and avoid commodity agriculture's low return on assets.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Shared Financial Management Builds Alignment For Food Businesses

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Open book management is sharing the company's finances and key financial drivers openly with managers to increase their buy-in and understanding of the company's performance. By sharing company finances and expecting financial literacy of managers, open-book management allows multiple leaders to use the same language and work towards the same goal.

Article about Financial Management for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Growing A Successful Retail Food Co-op By Meeting Your Member’s Needs

1 hour & 5 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The Great Basin Community Food Co-op first opened to the public in downtown Reno with 500 feet of retail space, eventually hitting $1 million in sales in one year. In 2012 they moved to another 3-story location of about 3,000 square feet (on the main floor) even closer to downtown. In 2017, the store had about $4.5 million in sales after rapid growth.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Focused Prioritization Helps Good Food And Farm Businesses Reach Break-Even

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food entrepreneurs will always have lots of goals competing for their attention. Good entrepreneurs know how to prioritize goals and optimize their efforts for the goals they are pursuing as priorities. This allows them to build financially successful companies and, over time, pursue many more big, hairy, audacious goals than they would have otherwise.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Taking Investment in Your Food Business Changes Your Business (And You)

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food entrepreneurs themselves often feel changed when taking outside investor capital. They feel the weight of the responsibility of paying back those investors with a return. They often work even harder than they were before because others are sharing the risk with them and are emotionally invested in their business as well.

Article about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Financial Management For Food Businesses

Refining Your Processes and Building Great Financial Packages For Your Food Business

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The more you have the ability to analyze what went right or wrong, the more useful your financial model and plan are to making business decisions. Being able to have both an accurate history and a record of making realistic projections that were met can give entrepreneurs credibility with lenders, investors and the business' board of directors.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups | Growing and Scaling

Food Entrepreneurs Are Backed By Great Teams

Building The Right Financial Team For Your Food Business

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Behind every great food entrepreneur is a great financial team, whether that team is employed by the business directly or through an outsourcing method. Building that team helps the entrepreneur, management and board make informed decisions and allows the business' key stakeholders to focus on growing their customer base and strengthening their brand.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Building Great Financial Systems For Your Food Business

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

From the entrepreneur's perspective, the most important thing when using an accounting package is to ensure accurate setup and data entry so that they are able to produce accurate financial statements. While entrepreneurs need to understand their financial statements and financial drivers, they can often outsource some accounting work.

Podcast about Financial Management for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Cash Flow Basics (For Farmers)

11 minute Free read by Compeer Financial

Tight cash flow can be challenging, even for the most experienced grower. For a beginning farmer, however, a cash flow crunch can quickly become a disaster. An annual cash flow projection is a very useful tool for a farm. You plot out on a month-by-month basis when cash income will be received and when cash expenses will need to be paid.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Paul Dietmann on Setting Your Farm Up for Financial Success

1 hour & 15 minutes of Free audio by Farmer To Farmer Podcast

The single most important thing to do when starting a farm is to create a month-by-month cash flow projection. In the short term, cash flow is much more critical than profitability, because if cash flow is negative, the farm cannot survive once cash runs out. Profitability comes into play when the farmer is ready to retire or pass it on to the next generation.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Pricing Through Distribution Worksheet

Free tool by Edible-Alpha®

Food and Beverage producers should always work backwards from the selling price to determine the wholesale price. Sometimes both retailer and distributor margins can be lower in certain competitive product categories and in large scale conventional distributors and retailer. However, it is difficult to sustain at a Gross Margin Contribution of less than 35%.

Tool or Template about Sales and Marketing for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Fearless Farm Finances (The Book And Online Videos)

5+ hours of Free video (Book is Paid) by Edible-Alpha®

The updated Fearless Farm Finances 2nd Edition is a one-of-a-kind resource packed with instructions, tips and tools for setting up and managing a farm's financial system. Fearless Farm Finances covers farm financial management, farm data collection/organization, farm investment analysis, enterprise budgets, annual budgeting, business structure decisions, and more.

Books or Guide about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Communicate Your Financials Well to Raise Capital

5 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

As more and more consumers demand healthy, natural and free-from foods and as more capital and technical assistance is made available for new and innovative brands, the brands that survive will be the ones who take their communication about their financial position (and other metrics like store velocities) seriously.

Article about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Farm Credit and Value-Added Agriculture

1 hour & 5 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The farm credit system includes many lending organizations around the country and is a great source of financing, including for non-traditional farmers like CSAs and value-added on-farm processors. These institutions also sometimes provide educational opportunities around financial literacy, financial statements and what it takes to successfully repay a loan

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Weekly Cash Flow Forecast Template

Free template by Edible-Alpha®

Cash is not the same thing as net income, and most food companies burn up more of their cash on their balance sheet than on their income statement. This template helps model projected cash flow to help businesses properly manage cash.

Tool or Template about Operations for businesses that are Startups | Growing and Scaling