Pro Forma Financial Statements with Templates and Examples
Furthermore, when management has to gauge the probability of success or failure and decide if a potential return is worth the risk, pro formas are a way to examine the effects of different outcomes. Since we used a sales-driven projection, other variables like operating expenses, depreciation & amortization, and interest expense were unaffected by our pro forma adjustments. Simply, a “pro forma invoice” is a “confirmed purchase order” where buyer and supplier agree on detail and cost of the product to be shipped to the buyer.
- To prepare a pro forma statement, you can use a financial statement template or pro forma sample spreadsheets, like these from Smartsheet.
- We accept payments via credit card, wire transfer, Western Union, and (when available) bank loan.
- While they all fall into the same categories—income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement—they differ based on the purpose of the financial forecast.
- When presenting these ideas to other partners, lenders or to a board of directors, pro forma projections can clarify things.
Forecasts made from these financial statements may or may not contain an even higher degree of deviation from the actual state of the company. Although pro forma statements have advantages, they have limitations and downsides. After all, the statements are projections, which are essentially guesses about the future. Your business might benefit by following the SEC guidelines for public companies outlining how to use pro forma statements, even if you’re not a publicly traded business. The hypothetical scenarios in pro forma financials can help analysts predict risks early and prepare for them before making any concrete changes. This type of pro forma projection takes into account all of your financials for the fiscal year up until the present time, then adds projected outcomes for the remainder of the year.
Many of the items listed above are part of the GAAP, but not included in pro forma reporting, making it rife for possible deception. This discrepancy is part of the reason the distinction between pro forma and GAAP financial statements is important. Not all these things should be left off, but the decisions of what is left off should be well thought out and explained to potential investors, so they have a clear indication of what they are viewing. Knowing how the pro forma documents are compiled and what is left out is also critical when comparing different pro forma statements. Understanding this methodology and the decisions behind it will enable accurate comparisons and information to investors. Since pro forma financial statements and financial projections are quite similar, they may be considered synonymous.
Since we can’t predict the future, don’t rely solely on pro forma financial statements. Your assumptions could wind up wrong, throwing off your financial projections. Pro forma financial statements are financial reports based on hypothetical scenarios that utilise assumptions or financial projections. A pro forma financial statement is a way of projecting future financial results using estimated data. The term “pro forma” means “as a matter of form,” indicating that these financial information statements are more for planning purposes and are not intended to reflect historical data. However, creating and comprehending pro forma financial statements can be challenging, especially if you don’t have prior experience.
Pro Forma: What It Means and How to Create Pro Forma Financial Statements
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for example, uses pro forma invoices to assess duty and examine goods, but the importer on record is required to post a bond and produce a commercial invoice within 120 days from the date of entry. If the required commercial invoice is needed for statistical how long should you keep business records purposes, the importer has to produce the commercial invoice within 50 days from the date Customs releases the goods to the importer. In trade transactions, a pro forma invoice is a document that states a commitment from the seller to sell goods to the buyer at specified prices and terms.
- However, to comply with professional auditing standards, the documents can be audited at the request of the company or a third party.
- Pro forma financial statements are financial reports based on hypothetical scenarios that utilise assumptions or financial projections.
- They are built into the data to give a picture of a company’s profits if certain nonrecurring items are excluded.
- Pro forma is actually a Latin term meaning “for form” (or today we might say “for the sake of form, as a matter of form”).
- The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the United States’ regulator of its stock market, requires pro forma statements with any filing, registration, or proxy statement.
In creating your pro forma documents, it is advisable to create multiple sets with different scenarios, especially when their purpose is to help make decisions. In this way, your management team (or C-suite) has all the information they need to make informed decisions. 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. For more information on conducting risk analyses and the free templates to do so, see “All the Risk Assessment Matrix Templates You Need.” As an example, your team might need to decide between the acquisition of two separate businesses.
Purposeful leadership, best practices in strategic planning and cultivating a strong organizational culture
For example, a company will report its actual sales and expenses for the quarter that just passed and, in the same chart, will list its projections of these numbers for the current quarter. A budget is based on certain assumptions about future expenses and revenues. It takes into account past expenses and revenues and factors in the costs of the company’s plans for the fiscal year. Essentially, a pro forma financial statement can exclude anything a company believes obscures the accuracy of its financial outlook and can be a useful piece of information to help assess a company’s future prospects. If the business entity wants to predict future growth projections, there must be reliable measures and methodologies. Therefore, budgeting or forecasting is inevitable in all kinds of business entities.
Adjustments for Nonrecurring Items
These projected financial statements are referred to as pro forma financial statements. Traditionally, financial statement analysis is used to better understand a company’s performance over a specified period. While this provides insight into a company’s historical health, creating pro forma financial statements focuses on its future. For this reason, these reports can be leveraged in several ways, including analyzing risk, projecting investments, and showing expected results before the end of a reporting period.
Pro Forma Financial Accounting
So it’s best to use them in combination with other tools such as balance sheets, income statements, economic audits, and more. Generally, pro forma financial statements tend to portray a business as being more successful than it really is, and having more financial resources available than may actually be the case. Consequently, investors should be extremely cautious when evaluating these types of financial statements, and spend time understanding how they differ from the issuing firm’s normal financial statements. Pro forma financial statements are financial reports issued by an entity, using assumptions or hypothetical conditions about events that may have occurred in the past or which may occur in the future. These statements are used to present a view of corporate results to outsiders, perhaps as part of an investment or lending proposal. A budget may also be considered a variation on pro forma financial statements, since it presents the projected results of an organization during a future period, based on certain assumptions.
Suppose a company has recently gone through a substantial restructuring program. Stores or plants were closed; employees were laid off and benefits paid; departments were combined. After many years of research and development (R&D), they have applied for a patent on a new type of widget press technology. If they are granted the patent, they will be the only company that can use this new technology for 10 years. This new technology will allow XYZ Company to manufacture widget presses at half their current cost and several times more quickly. This could potentially make them the preferred provider in the space and help them gain market share.
Under standard Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, these nonrecurring restructuring costs would get posted on the company’s income statement, substantially reducing profits or maybe even showing losses. They’re an extremely helpful tool for business planning, as they enable you to conduct side-by-side comparisons based on different financial assumptions that can help you decide between two proposals or potential strategies. Therefore, to paraphrase Merriam-Webster, pro formas involve or are based on a suggested idea or theory. Put another way, they use information that can vary substantially from actual data. So while pro formas are fantastic for looking at events from different angles, never take them as gospel, only well-informed conjecture. The term is used in legal and business fields to refer to various types of documents that are generated as a matter of course.
Depending on the specialty, the new to established ratio will even out over time, as well as existing physicians’ revenue and compensation. When building pro forma financial statements, be sure to use realistic, conservative figures. If outside funds are needed, pro forma statements can help present the expected future results to lenders and other investors. Managers can use pro forma statements for a variety of reasons to illustrate the effects of executive decisions or expected changes in business. Often, events depicted in the pro-forma financial statements have yet to occur, so the actual financial picture of the company may be very different from the picture presented.
If you’re using the wrong credit or debit card, it could be costing you serious money. Our experts love this top pick, which features a 0% intro APR for 15 months, an insane cash back rate of up to 5%, and all somehow for no annual fee. Say you’re a business owner contemplating a loan to invest in more efficient equipment.
Unlike traditional financial statements that explain the past, pro forma documents usually look forward and rely on financial modeling and speculation. If you want to plan for upcoming economic changes, you need pro forma financial statements to predict future income, identify and control risks, and secure funding for your business. Planning and budgeting for business changes play crucial roles in operating a successful company. However, balance sheets, income statements, and similar finance-tracking documents focus only on the history of transactions and the current economic status of your company. We’re going to take you through the steps necessary to create a basic full-year pro forma projection using an income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet.