budget management of e-shop from the start to the first sales

Opening your own online store is always accompanied by many problems - everything must be taken into account, a lot of things to develop. Based on our experience, the most difficult stage for aspiring entrepreneurs is the financial side of the issue - to determine the optimal amount of finance needed for a startup, to determine the size of the budget that needs to be allocated for attracting clients , how to control the amount of the balance and how to deal with a lack of funds. If an entrepreneur loses sight of something, the business can collapse, which is why it is so important to calculate everything in advance.

Drawing up a financial model

In order to start an internet business, you need to do budget planning, which starts with developing a financial model and a short business plan. These two things are fundamental to a successful business and determine the algorithm for its development.

The financial model of an online store is a complex system that describes the development of a company in monetary terms, that is, how the total income from the business will look like given changing factors. Despite the fact that a business plan usually has an overestimated level and in fact all its stages cannot be completed in the expected volume, it will still help to navigate the current financial situation. For example, if there is a strong deviation from the plan, you can make a course correction in order to go in the right direction. The financial model of the company reflects the relationship in the monetary and other processes of the company. So, first of all, it starts from the specifics of a particular business.

Before building and maintaining a financial model, it is necessary to determine how well the entrepreneur understands the essence of his business. Without this knowledge, it will be impossible to create a working financial model . As for ready-made models that can be found on the network, it is rather difficult to choose them optimally for your business, since they were developed in a rather abstract way and have little in common with the specific ideas of this entrepreneur. Therefore, they, of course, can be used, but only in a converted form, adapted to the peculiarities of the individual situation. Knowing the essence and understanding how a business should develop, basic mathematical concepts and knowledge of Excel are enough to translate all processes into a business model.

Financial models of large enterprises are traditionally divided into blocks:

• accounting report showing the balance of funds in the company's account;
• the composition of operating, financial and investment flows;
• profit and loss of the enterprise;
• a thorough account of the movement of all funds within the company.

When drawing up a financial model, you should start with simple sketches of the main processes and gradually complicate the design with finer details. First, only the largest influencing factors are taken into account, while the accuracy of the calculations is not so much important as the distribution of connections between factors and processes. Further, with the complication of the model, each relationship will be "overgrown" with additional calculations.

At the very beginning, you need to estimate the operational activities and flows - costs and revenues. Income planning consists in listing all sources of profit and sorting them by time intervals - months. All these calculations are more convenient to perform in Excel cells. To most realistically predict the company's sales, you first need to assess the market and build a sales funnel.

The tools planned for use can help this - marketing events, advertising, calls and SMM. Here you need to build on the conversion of these tools, the transformation of the entire active sales department or website into orders, and then into the financial component. Roughly calculating at this stage the flow of customers per month for all commodity items, multiplying by the cost of the product, and then by the frequency of purchases of this product for a certain period, you can get the total flow for each item, and adding them up - the total incoming financial flow.

To get a net profit, you must also calculate the cost of goods. This concept is the sum of all expenses that are associated with the production, delivery and sale of a product, including funds for advertising campaigns, bonuses to employees involved in specific products, and so on. This work is carried out for each position. The total cost price determines the amount of resources to generate the previously calculated incoming cash flow. All data is entered into a separate table, it will be needed for further formation of the model. An example is a table of a company that sells branded air conditioners:

Next, you should calculate the estimated costs:

1. Constant - not depending on the amount of profit: business costs, rent of premises, salaries for personnel not directly related to products, equipment maintenance, marketing costs.
2. Variables - directly depend on the revenue: the volume of purchases, the remuneration of production workers plus taxes on it, transportation costs, the work of contractors, etc.

To calculate gross profit, you need to subtract the total amount of variable costs from the total amount of income. This produces a number that shows the direct performance of the operating financial model. This is a very important indicator both at this stage and in subsequent work.

Calculation of fixed costs is a rather important stage, here you need to take into account all the details, fines , commissions and take a realistic attitude to the situation. It may not be possible to cover all of the cost items the first time around, so you need to come back to this and add data gradually. When all fixed costs have been calculated, you need to calculate the operating profit. To do this, deduct fixed costs from gross profit. This indicator is responsible for the quality of the company's operating activities and, if at the very beginning of development it may be on the verge of zero, then in the future it should grow, otherwise there is no point in this scheme, the company will suffer losses. At this stage, a simple model based on the information received will look like this:

At the stage of planning costs, it is worth referring to market research and competitors' companies.

Costs of creating and launching an online store

The entire cost scheme for opening and maintaining an online store is as follows:

To have an idea of the capital required to start a business, you need to calculate all the costs of starting a business, including creating an online store from scratch. There is a fair bit of detail on how to calculate costs, and you can also create a store for free .

Initial costs include the following components:

• company registration;
• supplier search;
• website creation and everything connected with it.

The costs of an online store with registration - here the laws of the state in which the project is registered come into effect, some of the features of this procedure are related to their differences: a set of documents required for registration, collection of taxes and duties and other nuances. You can use intermediary services, but then it is worth including their payment in the expense item.

The next step is the purchase of goods. The costs in this case should be calculated based on several indicators:

• a scheme of cooperation with a supplier or manufacturer;
• selected product niche;
• variety of the planned assortment.

These are just a few of the nuances. However, this point can, in principle, be deleted if you start working with dropshipping. This is the most successful option for starting a business, since this way you can reduce the cost of purchasing and storing goods to zero. Also, there is no need to rent a warehouse, which will further reduce costs.

Dropshipping is a system of supplying products directly from a supplier. Acting as an intermediary in this scheme, an entrepreneur does not need to allocate a budget for the purchase of goods, transportation, storage and other actions, since he places an order from a manufacturer or supplier immediately after a client is found who will purchase these items from the intermediary. Payment occurs after receiving, as a result, the intermediary takes his commission, and transfers the price declared by him to the supplier. Everything is transparent and safe for any of the parties to the transaction. Of course, you can use other systems of doing business, everything will depend on the expected scope and plans of a novice entrepreneur.

Creating a working website for an online store is a responsible process. You can use one of the many free platforms and create a website yourself at no extra cost to templates. However, in this case, you will have to work a lot on the site yourself, and after that you will still need add-ons. This is all quite difficult for beginners, albeit real.

As a result, many entrepreneurs choose boxed CMS solutions so as not to waste time trying to raise a free site. Fortunately, there are many CMS at different costs, so choosing an option that fits the estimated budget will not be difficult. Here are the most popular systems and the cost of their projects:

• Okay CMS is a simple and convenient system for creating and managing an online store with multilingual templates, which has many useful functions and takes into account SEO requirements for website promotion, while having an affordable pricing policy; View store script

• 1C Bitrix is the most budgetary option, UAH 9 thousand. there is a basic version, 19 thousand - an extended one;
• UMI CMS - 23 thousand rubles. an online store will cost, and for 35 thousand rubles you can purchase an online store and a large commercial portal;
• NetCat - offers to buy any commercial site, regardless of size, for 29 thousand rubles.
• Image CMS - $ 299 for the professional version, premium model for $ 499.

More information can also be found here. In addition to buying a website, the costs of developing an individual design and filling it with content are taken into account.

Order processing costs

Let's take a simple financial model as an example. An online store is launched, in which the average check is approximately 4400 rubles. The margin on the order is about 20 percent . At the same time, the entrepreneur receives 880 rubles from each order. However, in addition to the cost of goods, you should take into account the costs of order processing and SRO.

Order processing costs include costs associated with purchasing an item. This is control over the availability and quality of products, preparatory work, transfer of the completed order, receipt of the goods and verification of their compliance with the agreed conditions, laying out on the shelves in the warehouse, document control, as well as registering and issuing salaries to the relevant employees who took participation.

The administrative and management costs associated with processing a specific consignment purchase order are as follows:

• registration costs - placement , conclusion of the order;
• payment of travel allowances, if necessary, send an employee for an order;
• telephone and postage;
• transportation costs, provided that they are not included in the cost of production;
• expenses for the acceptance of goods and their storage;
• certain expenses for setting up industrial equipment for the release of a batch of goods.

Costs that are not directly affected by the change in the number of orders are called constant. These include payment of rent, salaries, telephony, and more. At the same time, advertising costs are not taken into account, they are allocated as a separate factor - SRO. The abbreviation stands for Сost per order. This indicator clearly demonstrates the cost of each attracted client, in other words, how much the company directly spent on advertising in order for the client to become interested in its products. Its value is calculated using the following formula:

Thus, knowing how much money is spent on attracting a customer, you can calculate the cost of processing one order. It will look like this in the table.

Taking into account the amount of fixed costs of 120 thousand per month and in the presence of 22 orders, the processing of one order will cost the company 545 rubles. As a result, from the profit for each order, it is necessary to subtract the cost of its processing - 335 rubles remain. At the same time, this money still needs to be distributed between the profitable part and the advertising part. There are two options for the development of events:

• you can fix the amount of profit from each order, then it will be the same for all received orders;
• you can do the same with the amount allocated to attract each customer.

For example, an entrepreneur lays 200 rubles from one order in the budget for an online store for advertising activities. Based on this data, you can calculate the total amount allocated for advertising in a given month by multiplying the SRO by the number of orders. Thus, if the estimated number of orders is 220, then the advertising budget will be 220 * 200 = 44,000 rubles. These data are coordinated with advertising agencies, the budget is tied to the SRO, so the amount spent on advertising will always be known to the entrepreneur in advance. This will protect him from unreasonable spending with the lack of guaranteed sales. And as a result, the owner of the company will receive a net profit in the following amount - 135 rubles from each order, multiply by their number and get 29,600 rubles per month.

For an online store to have such profits, it is necessary to reach a turnover amount of 968,000 rubles (4,400 x 220 = 968,000). At the same time, it is imperative to monitor fluctuations in margin and profit, otherwise you can work at a loss, arranging discounts and promotions for clients. In addition, with such a low profitability - 135 rubles per order - there is no point in thinking about the idea of paying for delivery at the expense of the store, since then there will be no profit at all.

Online store advertising budget

Sales after the opening of an online store depend, first of all, on the competent promotion of the site. Financing online stores , their promotion and promotion is the most important stage of a business.

That is why many experts recommend tackling this issue even before creating and launching a project. If you carry out work on business planning in the following order: the formation of a promotion strategy - the creation of a site according to a given plan, then in the first month you can get good profits. For example, the product has not yet entered the market, but it is already actively advertised, therefore, by the time it is released, there is a high excitement, everything is sold out, and the manufacturer receives a good income.

To plan the advertising budget of the future online store, you need to rely on the following stages:

• preparation and collection of information;
• determining the size of the market;
• assessment of advantages, analysis of competitors, their pros and cons, consultations with specialists;
• assessment of the estimated profitability, from which it becomes clear how much of current income can be directed to an advertising campaign;
• finalization of the technical functionality of the site.

Before opening a company, you need to decide on the category of the goods to be sold; you should not grab a diverse assortment right away. The well-known online store "Rozetka" started with selling only laptops, and then gradually expanded its product range, conquering an ever larger niche in the market. Next, it is necessary to designate the boundaries of the proposed market - the level of the city, region, country, international. A novice entrepreneur should not immediately encroach on a large market, there are quite serious competitors, who have much more experience and a reputation built up over the years.

You should carefully analyze the selected category, consider the competitors, what they offer, how they attract buyers and how they retain the audience. To make a profit in the first months after starting work, you need to correctly build an advertising policy. If there are already several suppliers of this product on the market, it is worth highlighting what exactly you are a priority for customers. Perhaps you have low prices, a showroom in a particular city, where visitors can see the product not only in the picture on the network, but also "touch" it, or you provide a good installment plan and show loyalty. All of this can put an unknown entrepreneur in a good light, helping to lure customers from competing companies.

On average, Russian television shows about 20 thousand commercials per year, therefore, investing insufficiently, you can simply get lost in this stream, among which there are many already well-known and popular brands. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account all the factors of influence of advertising, and, based on this, calculate the minimum advertising budget for product promotion.

American marketing specialists (Bove, Arena) have identified 9 principles on which an advertising budget is built.

1. Percentage of sales. This principle is relevant, if the project has been on the market for some time, the beginner has nothing to compare the percentage with.
2. Profit percentage. In fact, the same thing, only in monetary terms.
3. Sales level in units of goods.
4. Competitive parity. The money is distributed in an amount corresponding to the costs of the main competitors. This method is also called "self-defense method".
5. Equity participation in the market.
6. Method of matching with the task. A targeted approach that includes setting goals, choosing strategies and determining the costs of their implementation.
7. Empirical method. According to him, they conduct research among different companies and markets in order to optimize the level of costs.
8. Use of quantitative mathematical models.
9. The method of linking existing funds.

In any case, it is worth noting that it is impossible to unequivocally determine the advertising budget in a rapidly changing reality. Each time, you will have to re-analyze, take into account a lot of influencing factors and react to the slightest changes in the economic, political, competitive and social environment.

Monthly maintenance costs

The opening of an online store is accompanied by subsequent regular spending on its maintenance.

1. Office and warehouse rent. Provided that your store is not going to sell a batch of large-sized goods, this item can be omitted for the first time or you can use the box in a mini-warehouse - it's cheap and there are all the necessary conditions for storing products.
2. Office expenses. Stationery and all sorts of useful little things for office work.
3. Employee salaries. When the business expands, and the number of orders begins to increase, you will not be able to do without the help of subordinates. And the small staff consists of an administrator, a sales manager, an accountant and a content editor, which together will cost you about $ 1,000 per month, but the rates are relative, as they depend on the volume of work.

In addition, the promotion of an online store should be included in this list. Advertising costs are also monthly and constant. As soon as you stop advertising, sales will decline.

Cash flow plan based on the calendar

According to the development plan, you always know in which direction you are going, how to correct the course and achieve success. But in order for you to have an idea of the state of affairs of your store at any given time, you need to use special tools to monitor the financial situation, for example, BDDS . This is a calendar cash flow budget that clearly demonstrates the situation here and now.

Often, entrepreneurs make a serious mistake when they expect that the business performance is shown by the balance on the current account. This figure is not an indicator and not a store's profit. An online store has a ton of obligations to customers, suppliers, creditors, employees, and other parties. The money that circulates in circulation serves to fulfill these obligations, therefore, only if the amount of funds in the company's current account significantly exceeds the total amount of regular expenses, then these funds can be considered profit.

On the example of the calendar BDDS, you can see that money is tracked in real time. On one sheet of the file, all information on the receipts and expenses of finance in the company is entered, moreover, it is possible to enter both planned receipts and expenses for certain dates with a special note. Perhaps this is the time for the issuance of wages or payment of means of communication - usually this happens on the same dates every month, so you can safely plan.

The second sheet contains an automatic calendar financial report for each entered workday.

Online store money tracking

All these funds help to calculate the balance of money at the end of the calendar month and for each day, so you can predict the balance in case of unexpected spending. However, in order for a business to be considered successful, there must be a large positive difference between the money reserved for the delivery of goods to customers and the balance.

Example

To illustrate the situation, here's an example. At the beginning of the calendar month, the account had a balance of 1,000 rubles. The buyer made an advance payment, transferred 30 thousand for the product, the cost of which is 25 thousand. The product is not in the warehouse of the online store, which means that you need to make an order from the supplier. During this period, it is time to pay for communication services, rent and other things. You spend 10 thousand rubles to close these "holes", and 21 thousand remain on the account. The balance is pleasantly positive, especially since it is much more than at the beginning of the month, but now you have an obligation to the client - you must pay him a product that you lack 4 thousand to order. A single situation is demonstrated here, but in fact the store has much more customers, so there is a risk of accumulating large debts and not fulfilling the promise.

In order to prevent such a situation from arising, the cash flow budget provides for accounting not only for the total funds on the account, but also for the margin. Thus, you will always see if you have enough money to fulfill all obligations.

In the operational register of the program, the amount is instantly reserved when money is credited to the account. After that, it gradually decreases when certain obligations are fulfilled, this may be:

• purchase of goods;
• sending and delivery of products to the client and so on.

The difference between this reserve and total cash will be the very profit of the company. The most important thing is that the value of the margin balance is always above zero, otherwise a pyramid scheme comes out when obligations to old clients are fulfilled at the expense of new ones.

Correct tracking and forecasting of the account balance

If there is a negative value of the balance of finance, there is a risk of a cash gap, which means that there will not be enough funds on the company's account to fulfill all the obligations assumed. The expenses of the online store have significantly exceeded the possibilities.

To combat this situation, 2 types of measures are used:

• preventive;
• operational.

The first category contains the following methods of exposure.

• Stimulation of prepayment. To get out of the minus, you can temporarily attract prepaid funds, thus, the obligations will be fulfilled.
• Controlling accounts receivable. The sooner the debts are closed, the sooner the money goes to your account.

• Reducing the number of goods in the warehouse. Not all products are sold quickly, some of them are “frozen”. If this happens with certain items constantly, they need to be purchased less. You can also sell them at a discount to replenish your stock.

The second category represents such interventions.

• Installment payments when working with customers and suppliers.
• Using a current account with an overdraft. This is a banking service for business lending in the event of a cash gap.
• Factoring. Works in the case of a postpaid purchase system. In this case, a third party is involved, for example, a bank, which is endowed with the right to claim a debt. The store receives the money immediately.

The most successful, of course, is to focus on preventive methods of dealing with the cash gap, but in especially neglected cases, you can use more radical operational ones. Nevertheless, it is advisable to predict fluctuations in the balance and to prevent the occurrence of such a situation when the costs of an online store exceed profits.

You can use a partial prepayment, split the payment into 2-3 parts, this strategy will allow you not to spend all the money from the turnover and not enter the gap.

Let's summarize

Using the tools and techniques described above, as well as basic planning and accounting recommendations, will allow you to effectively manage money in your own online store. Only a company whose business processes are understandable and accessible can only be managed qualitatively, therefore it is necessary to regularly monitor the financial condition of the store.

By building a financial model and taking into account all factors of influence, you will be able to track everything that happens in your business in order to correct the course in time, prevent unplanned situations, avoid cash shortages and assess the profitability of the project, in general. This will allow you to direct forces in the right direction, to correct what is needed, avoiding critical marks. A calendar plan greatly simplifies your work, because when using it, you can control income and expenses, forecast profits and always keep your finger on the pulse of your company. The circulation of money in the store is like the blood circulation in the body - as long as this process continues, life glows, as soon as something goes wrong - the business can collapse in a matter of days.

However, in order for an open online store to generate income, it is necessary to avoid mistakes that almost all beginners make. So, the most common misconceptions about starting your own business on the Internet in a year.

• It is very easy to enter the market. It is not difficult to start online trading, it is much more difficult to make decent money on it. The development of a store does not raise any questions, it can be created even on a free platform, but to attract traffic, get stable
• We can handle it ourselves, there is no need to contact specialists. Newbies can spare money for development, promotion and other important points in order to save money, trying to do it on their own and for free on simple. However, the chances of creating a good project will increase significantly if you use the services of professionals.
• To be successful, you need to stand out from the crowd. Thanks to this misconception, many beginners are able to take the time to reinvent the wheel; and, in the end, you will not achieve a result, since you will not be able to find the desired zest very quickly, and then the enthusiasm will simply fade away
• An online store is no different from a regular one, the same store, only on the net. This is not true, online sales are developing according to a completely different scenario, and this is happening in Russia in Moscow and other cities), and in Ukraine and in any other state.
• Traffic and conversion are the keys to success. These are important ingredients, but not a guarantee of profitability.
• I did everything right, which means I will definitely make a profit. However, even when it seems that everything has already been done, and the main processes have started, one cannot relax for a minute. In any business, you should not rely too much on the fact that "it will go further by itself", because while you are resting, someone develops new strategies and tomorrow goes to the international level, leaving you far behind.

Online business is a very promising direction, which, with a competent approach, can bring in a lot of money.