Free Financial Statement Template Created by Chartered Accountants for South African Business Owners and Individuals.
South African Small Business Owners can use our CFO360 Financial Statement Template to have oversight on their financial position in their business.
This is a perfect template for the startup owner that needs insight into their business or an individual that would like to understand their income and expenses.
Do you need an accountant or bookkeeper to complete the report for you?
Absolutely not! The template is easy to use and can be done in a matter of minutes.
Although it is easy to use, it is recommended to get some advice from an accountant to analyze and interpret your reports.
The Excel financial statement template can also be used in Google Sheets or be printed to a professional presentable financial statement PDF document.
Download the free financial statement template.
Download our FREE Income Statement Template for Small Business owners and Individuals
Lost track of your income and expenses? Our CFO360 income statement template will give you all the info and insight you need. Never lose sight of your profitability again.
Download FREE Financial Statement Template
– Easy to use
– Record income and expenses
– Import bank statements
– Professional reporting
Below we will cover some topics and common questions on financial statements. Feel free to jump to any section that interests you:
- Overview and how to use financial statement template
- Benefits of using the financial statement template
- Better alternatives to use (paid and free)
- How to do financial statements in Excel?
- Do you need a bookkeeper or accountant to prepare the income statement?
- How do you prepare a monthly income statement?
- How do I prepare financial statements from my bank statement?
- What is the difference between the balance sheet and income statement?
- Conclusion
Overview of the financial statement template and how to use
CFO360 Small Business Accounting Sheet
The first page can be considered as your front page of your report. As a result this can help present your report to others with your own branding.
Replace our logo and information with your logo and company information.
Accounts Mapping Sheet
Firstly, accounts need to be created and correctly classified to get an accurate income statement
We have listed the most common accounts that the majority of South African businesses would need.
But, more accounts can be added and/or edited to suit your business needs.
Transactions Sheet
Secondly, copy and paste your bank statements into this sheet.
Then go ahead and sort the transactions into their relevant accounts.
Most importantly, make sure the date format matches the template’s format. Also make sure to match each transaction to an account.
As a result the information will automatically pull through to your income statement.
Non financial transactions that don’t appear on your bank statements need to be entered manually. For example depreciation.
Income Statement Sheet
Thirdly, after matching all the transactions to their accounts, view your income statement.
Select the start- and end date you would like to review your report in. For example, Date Start 02/01/2021, Date End 02/28/2021. As a result this will show the income statement for February 2021.
Lastly, analyze your income statement and reflect on the performance of your business.
Benefits of using the income statement template
To list a few benefits:
- The template is easy to use
- Shows accurate profitability
- Gives you a good view of income and expenses
- Allows you to measure the performance of the business
- And is free to download and use
Better alternatives to use
Paid Alternatives
For our accounting service clients, we only use the best accounting software to ensure we provide the most accurate reporting.
Xero – Cloud Based Accounting software that we use on 99% of our client base. It is user friendly, affordable, and delivers high impacting reports. Above all, we love the expanding app community that makes it easy to scale your business.
Quickbooks – Similar to Xero but more suitable for the person with a smaller budget in mind. Works well for sole proprietors and businesses that only have a couple of expenses and invoices.
Sage One – Because of the reputation of their legacy product “Pastel” this has been a popular choice for South African businesses and accountants. Very similar functionality to Quickbooks and Xero, however, their user-friendliness is not as good as their competitors.
Free Alternatives
Free alternatives will definitely be an upgrade from keeping financial records on Excel. But, we wouldn’t recommend running a business with high transaction volume or VAT registered business on any free platform.
Wave Accounting – More suited as an “Excel upgrade” for freelancers and consultants. The product includes free reporting and invoicing to run your day to day business finances.
How to do financial statements in Excel?
Although it is possible to do your financial statements in Excel, it is probably not advisable to do so as you have many considerations to take into account. You would need a well-structured template to pull through all your accounting policies, notes, and items on your balance sheet, cash flow, statement of equity, and income statement.
You can use our income statement template to populate your income statement, but you will need to still present your balance sheet, cash flow statement, equity statement, notes, tax calculations, director notes, report of the compiler etc.
If you wish to do your statements in Excel you would need to keep track of many moving pieces and disclose them according to your correct financial framework. This might be easier to get a qualified accountant to help you with your financial statements to ensure the accuracy thereof and that all compliance requirements are met. Also, depending on your business metrics it may be a legal requirement to have an Independent Professional Compile, Review or Audit your business financials.
Do you need a bookkeeper or accountant to prepare the income statement?
Any business owner or individual can create their own income statement and won’t need any help from an accountant or bookkeeper for internal purposes. But if you would like to present annual financial statements to third parties like banks, SARS, investors, etc we would advise looking for a professional to help prepare these for you.
According to the Companies Act, it is a requirement to have your compiled annual financial statements. Depending on the requirements set out in the Companies Act, your business might even require an independent review or audit or an independent compilation.
There are also more benefits to appointing an accountant than just preparing your accounts. Appropriate tax planning, business advisory, tax compliance, valuable reporting, streamlining of processes, internal controls are all benefits of having a qualified professional accountant.
How do you prepare a monthly income statement?
To prepare your monthly income statement go through the following checklist first.
- Have you taken into account all invoices and supplier invoices for the given period? For most business in South Africa, our tax and accounting is calculated on Accrual Basis. In non-accounting terms, this means your income and expenses are recognised when an invoice is raised or received. This means you need to include invoices raised/received in your period even if the cash has not been paid or received yet.
- Have you captured all your income and expenses from your bank account and allocated them to the correct accounts?
- Identify the time frame in which you are reporting and presenting your income statement
- Include your non-financial transactions such as depreciation and tax for the month.
After you have run through the basic checklist you can now run through your income statement.
Revenue – Total sales figure for your reporting period. Take into account all the invoices you have raised whether or not the payments have been received yet.
Cost of Goods – Allocate all of your direct costs to generate your sales in this account.
Gross Profit – Sales subtracted by your direct costs (costs of goods). This is the amount of profit you make with direct sales without taking into consideration your operating expenses.
Operating Expenses – Ongoing costs to run the business or deliver your product.
Net Profit – The profit or loss after accounting for all revenue less cost of goods and expenses.
How do I prepare financial statements from my bank statement?
To compile financial statements form your bank statements you would need to allocate every transaction that moves through your bank account to their relevant accounts for the financial year. You would then need to do a number of journals to account for the types of transactions that may need to be accrued for to ensure complete financial statements.
Although you can allocate your income and expenses according to cash basis, this does not take into account your accounts payable and receivable. To ensure completeness of records you need to also take into consideration all invoices and supplier invoices raised in this period. You would also need to take into consideration any non-financial transactions such as depreciation and also any transactions that are deductible or not allowed for tax purposes.
What is the difference between balance sheet and income statement?
Both the income statement and the balance sheet are important statements to determine the performance and health of the business.
The income statement gives you insights into the company’s performance for any given period. While the balance sheet gives you information on the assets, liabilities, and equity at a point in time. This is only one of the fundamental differences between the two reports, let’s have a look at what other differences there are.
Overview of the Income Statement
The income statement, or often called the profit and loss statement. Is shows stakeholders the income, direct costs, operating expenses, and profit. This helps to determine the overall performance of the business and whether or not the company is generating a profit. Investors will also have a look at the income statement to determine if the business will be able to meet its financial obligations.
Income statement breakdown:
Revenue
Income that an entity earns form it’s normal operating activities. This is often called Sales or Turnover.
Other Income
Similar to Revenue, other income is classified as income for the business, but this is generally from non-ordinary operations. This includes transactions such as interest income, profit on a sale of assets, etc.
Cost of Sales (Direct costs)
Expenses directly connected to the sale of a product or service. For product-based businesses, this is the cost of the product, freight charges, labour, and any other direct costs that fluctuate with the Revenue. For service-based businesses this may be the cost of the time spent delivering the service.
Gross Profit
Revenue – (Minus) Cost of Sales = Gross profit. This is the business profit before taking into account the operating expenses and other income.
Operating Expenses
Costs needed to continue running your business that are usually ongoing. Examples are accounting fees, insurance, office supplies, rent, and many more.
Net Profit
The net profit is the bottom line of the income statement and shows what the profit was for the given period. This is after all sales, direct costs, operating expenses and taxes have been taken into account.
Overview of the Balance Sheet
Unlike the income statement, the balance sheet only shows you a snapshot of the business at a point in time and not over a period of time.
The balance sheet can mostly be broken up into 3 categories assets, liabilities, and equity.
Assets
According to IFRS, an asset is a resource controlled by the entity as a result. of past events and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity. Assets are usually ordered on the balance sheet based on their liquidity in the company. From the most easily converted into cash, current assets, down to the least easily converted into cash, non-current assets. Examples include accounts receivable, bank balances, and inventory.
Liabilities
Liabilities are defined as a present obligation of the entity arising from past events, the settlement of which is expected to result in an outflow of the entity’s resource. These are broken up into current liabilities and non-current liabilities. Non-current liabilities can also be known as your long-term liabilities which obligations will only be due after 1 year. Current liabilities are due within 1 year and are considered to be short term. Examples of liabilities are loans, accounts payable, and taxes payable.
Equity
Equity is all of the money originally invested in the entity, plus the retained earnings (built-up profit/loss since the business started), minus all of the distributions paid to the owners.
The balance sheet always needs to be in balance with the total of the assets equal to the liabilities plus the equity.
Assets = Liabilities + Equity
In Conclusion
Using an income statement template is definitely an improvement from not having any overview of your business. But a financial statement excel template will take more time to complete manually than an automated accounting system. Also, by completing your statements manually, you open yourself up to human error and inaccurate information. Although there might be fees involved it will always be worth it to get a qualified accountant to help keep your business compliant and create accurate reports.
*All guides are intended as general information only. Always check with a professional for advice.
