Voila! You can now download this spreadsheet
DownloadNeed a business plan for projections and scenario planning? This fully customizable Mobile App Business Plan can forecast new business lines, products, or price strategies, whether the revenue model is based on subscriptions, ads, or in-app purchases. Accounts for CapEx, overhead, and sales and marketing costs. We've created this Mobile App Business Plan spreadsheet template in Excel and Google Sheets that you can use to plan your next mobile app.
Whether your revenue model is based on subscriptions, ads, or in-app purchases, this Mobile App Business Plan template has everything you need for forecasts and projections with charts and graphs. Best of all, the Mobile App Business Plan spreadsheet is fully customizable and isn't just for mobile apps. Any business can use it to forecast prospective profits and expenses no matter their revenue model. We'll now show how to use the Mobile App Business Plan spreadsheet template for projections, forecasting, and scenario planning no matter what stage a business is in.
To begin your mobile app development project plan, start on the Fields tab. First enter any static inputs such as company name, start date, and the horizon in months to be forecasted. This model is hard-capped at 121 months (or 10 years). With macroeconomic factors what they are going into 2023, many variables change rapidly. A forecast of 12 months, three years, and five years is usually sufficient for scenario planning. But as 91% of CEOs are planning for a recession in the next 12 months, it is currently advised to increase the amount of runway startups have saved away from the typical 18 months to 36 months - that's right, three years worth.
Next, adjust any income taxes, payroll taxes, or transaction fees such as marketplace or credit card fees due upon transaction. Below that, adjust any inventory and return fees, such as the cost to store any physical goods, any markdowns of resale items, return processing costs, and averaged rate of returns. And at the bottom, the inflation rate is defined as a dynamic input that can be manually entered for each year in your horizon period. This is incredibly important, as inflation is a critical factor that will impact every business for the foreseeable future.
Next, the revenue for your mobile app can be projected as subscriptions, products sold, or ads displayed. This business plan compares all three streams against each other for analysis: For a subscription-based business, the Subscriptions tab can assess up to ten subscription plans to compare. Define the frequency of the payments, the lifetime period (or how long the average user stays subscribed), lifetime value (or how much they pay over their lifetime), and new monthly subscriptions forecasted for each price tier. The model then projects the new subscriptions per month, active subscriptions per month, and forecasted revenues per month of each of your subscription tiers.
The Products tab assesses up to 10 different product types and sizes, their price, sales per month, and monthly sales growth rate. For a mobile app, this could be in-app purchases or different price-points for the app itself to test against each other. As mentioned at the beginning, this business plan doesn't have to be used for mobile apps alone: any business can use this to scenario-plan different products and price points, like if you need a business plan for a restaurant with a website or a business plan for a trucking company that conducts sales online.
The Ads tab assesses up to 10 ad types along with the platform's total starting monthly active users (MAU) and growth. It works to find the total percent, CPM, and revenue of all platform impressions
Remember, if you want to utilize this Mobile App Business Plan spreadsheet, you can download and customize it right now. Speaking of customization - a critical feature of all these forecast tables is the ability to override any month you want. This override will adjust all the following periods, but to adjust it back to normal, copy and drag the cell to the left of it, and the rest of the formulas will revert.
Operations calculates any expenses tied to the individual subscription tiers or products, and covers cost of goods sold, packaging and shipping fees, and any return costs.Marketing and sales calculates marketing expenses per each subscription and product, followed by sales costs such as transaction fees, which are calculated on the Fields tab. Overhead calculates headcount expenses by role, and salary, bonuses, payroll taxes, equipment costs and amenities per head to find the total cost per employee. The company-specific overhead is listed underneath that, which can be defined by their name, frequency, dollar per unit, and cost per month.
All these projections are then summed in the Summary tab. The total revenues table includes filters to highlight a specific subscription, ad type, or product. The expense totals are listed underneath that in the expenses section. At the bottom, the total revenue and expenses are calculated to find the net profit or loss for each month, both before and after taxes, in order to find the IRR of this business plan. IRR is a critical metric to estimate the profitability of potential investments and helps assess if this business investment will be worth it. The higher the percentage, the more desirable the investment.
The Dashboard then visualizes the data from all these tables to showcase the total revenues, expenses, and difference between revenues vs profit of your business plan. With easy-to-read charts that visualize your financial forecasts, this dashboard is perfect for internal analysis or external pitches.
For the analysis needed to make better investment decisions, download and customize this Mobile App Business Plan spreadsheet template in Microsoft Excel or Google sheets now. Next, go check out our Sales Pipeline spreadsheet template to visualize and forecast upcoming sales leads and projections, or our other Business Plan template and Ultimate Startup Pro Forma spreadsheet for more business plan examples. For more tools to share your business plan outline with potential investors, check out our Ultimate Pitch Deck (Part 4) pitch deck template. We have plenty of pitch deck examples as part of our library, so if you're interested in more, join our Plus service today.
Voila! You can now download this spreadsheet
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