Entrepreneurship Finance

Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs

Build a practical financial system for pricing, cash flow, forecasting, and growth decisions

Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs logo
Quick Course Facts
18
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
18
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
6.0
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs Course

Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs is a practical course designed to help founders make smarter money decisions with confidence. Whether you are launching a new venture or improving an existing one, this Entrepreneurship-focused training shows you how to build a practical financial system for pricing, cash flow, forecasting, and growth decisions.

Build Financial Clarity for Entrepreneurship Success

  • Learn how to read the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement with confidence
  • Build a practical financial system for pricing, cash flow, forecasting, and growth decisions
  • Turn business goals into measurable numbers that support stronger planning
  • Make better decisions about hiring, funding, taxes, and long-term investments

Financial Planning for Entrepreneurs gives you the tools to manage your business with clarity, structure, and forward-looking insight.

This course walks you through the financial foundations every founder needs, starting with the mindset and core statements that shape smart decision-making. You will learn how to connect strategy to numbers, identify the drivers behind revenue, costs, and profit, and create a startup budget that reflects real business priorities. By the end of these lessons, you will understand how financial planning supports entrepreneurship at every stage of growth.

From there, you will build practical forecasting skills by estimating sales, creating a cash flow forecast, and understanding working capital so you can anticipate timing issues before they become problems. You will also explore pricing for profit, break-even analysis, and the key financial KPIs that help you monitor performance without getting lost in unnecessary data. These tools give you a stronger grasp of how your business actually operates and where adjustments can make the biggest difference.

The course also covers funding options, tax planning, risk management, hiring decisions, and capital expenditure analysis so you can evaluate major choices with more confidence. You will learn how to prepare investor-ready financial information and establish a monthly review routine that keeps your plans current as the business evolves. After completing this course, you will be able to approach Entrepreneurship with a stronger financial strategy, better judgment, and a clear plan for sustainable growth.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Course foundations and financial mindset

1 lesson

Financial planning matters because it turns entrepreneurship from guesswork into a repeatable decision process. In this lesson, Professor David Grant explains how financial planning helps entrepreneur…

Income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow basics

1 lesson

Lesson 2: Understanding the Core Financial Statements

22 min
This lesson explains the income statement , balance sheet , and cash flow statement in plain business terms so entrepreneurs can read them without accounting jargon. You will learn what each statement…

Turning strategy into numbers

1 lesson

Lesson 3: Setting Business Goals That Can Be Measured Financially

18 min
In this lesson, you will learn how to turn broad business strategy into measurable financial goals. Instead of vague targets like grow faster or be more profitable , you will define clear numbers tied…

Knowing what actually moves your results

1 lesson

Lesson 4: Tracking Revenue, Costs, and Profit Drivers

20 min
This lesson helps entrepreneurs identify the numbers that actually drive business performance: revenue, direct costs, and profit. You will learn how to separate what you sell , what it costs to delive…

Planning essential spending from day one

1 lesson

Lesson 5: Building a Simple Startup Budget

19 min
This lesson shows entrepreneurs how to build a simple startup budget that covers only the essential spending needed to launch and operate. You will identify fixed and variable startup costs, separate …

Practical revenue assumptions and scenarios

1 lesson

Lesson 6: Forecasting Sales Without Guesswork

21 min
This lesson shows entrepreneurs how to forecast sales without guessing by building practical revenue assumptions from real business drivers. Instead of relying on hope or a single best-case number, yo…

Timing money in and money out

1 lesson

Lesson 7: Creating a Cash Flow Forecast You Can Trust

24 min
This lesson shows entrepreneurs how to build a cash flow forecast that is practical enough to use and reliable enough to make decisions from. You will map money coming in and money going out by timing…

How inventory, receivables, and payables affect liquidity

1 lesson

Lesson 8: Working Capital and the Entrepreneur's Cash Cycle

20 min
Working capital is the money tied up in day-to-day operations that keeps a business moving. In this lesson, you will learn how inventory , receivables , and payables shape the entrepreneur’s cash cycl…

Setting prices that support your business model

1 lesson

Lesson 9: Pricing for Profit and Sustainability

23 min
This lesson shows entrepreneurs how to set prices that support a healthy business model, not just cover costs. You will learn the difference between cost-plus , value-based , and market-aware pricing,…

Finding the minimum performance needed to stay viable

1 lesson

Lesson 10: Break-Even Analysis and Contribution Margin

19 min
This lesson explains how to measure the minimum sales needed to cover your business costs and begin generating profit. You will learn the difference between fixed costs, variable costs, contribution m…

Choosing a small set of meaningful metrics

1 lesson

Lesson 11: Financial KPIs Every Founder Should Monitor

18 min
In this lesson, you will identify the small set of financial KPIs that actually help an entrepreneur make better decisions. Rather than tracking every possible metric, you will learn how to separate s…

Comparing capital options and their trade-offs

1 lesson

Lesson 12: Funding Your Business: Bootstrapping, Debt, and Equity

22 min
This lesson helps entrepreneurs compare the three main ways to fund a business: bootstrapping , debt , and equity . You will learn what each option costs, what control you give up, how it affects cash…

Avoiding unpleasant surprises

1 lesson

Lesson 13: Planning for Taxes, Compliance, and Reserves

18 min
Taxes, compliance, and reserves are the parts of financial planning that often get ignored until they create a cash crunch. In this lesson, Professor David Grant shows entrepreneurs how to build simpl…

Preparing for slower sales, delays, and shocks

1 lesson

Lesson 14: Managing Risk and Building Contingency Plans

20 min
This lesson shows entrepreneurs how to prepare for common financial shocks before they happen. You will learn how to identify your biggest business risks, estimate which ones matter most, and build si…

Knowing when a new hire is affordable

1 lesson

Lesson 15: Using Financial Planning to Support Hiring Decisions

19 min
This lesson shows entrepreneurs how to tell whether a new hire is truly affordable before making an offer. The focus is on turning financial planning into a practical hiring test: estimating the full …

Assessing major purchases and long-term payback

1 lesson

Lesson 16: Capital Expenditure and Investment Decisions

21 min
Capital expenditure decisions are about choosing purchases that create value over multiple years, not just solving a short-term problem. In this lesson, you will learn how to judge whether a major ass…

Presenting forecasts and assumptions professionally

1 lesson

Lesson 17: Preparing Investor-Ready Financial Information

20 min
In this lesson, you will learn how to prepare financial information that looks credible to investors and is easy to review. The focus is on presentation quality, clear assumptions, and the core statem…

Keeping the plan current as the business evolves

1 lesson

Lesson 18: Building Your Monthly Financial Review Routine

18 min
This lesson shows you how to run a monthly financial review that keeps your business plan current without turning finance into a full-time job. You will learn what to check each month, how to compare …
About Your Instructor
Professor David Grant

Professor David Grant

Professor David Grant guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.