Before beginning work on this discussion post, review Chapter 16, “The Financials,” in your textbook. You have already read this chapter during the previous week. With your review this week, specifically examine:

• “Assumption Sheet,” pages 323–324 and “Sample Plan: Assumptions,” page 332.
• “Sources and Use of Funds,” page 317 and “Sample Plan: Sources and Use of Funds,” page 331.
• “Break-Even Analysis,” pages 320–321.

The financial plan must be based on decisions and facts. Investors want to know whether your business plan is realistic.

For This Week’s Discussion, Please Respond to the Following

Provide a written overview of the plan assumptions and key financials based on the information contained in your business plan and your Business Plan Financials Excel Template.

Use headings (bold) to address each required topic.

Be sure to include:

Key Financial

Specific Worksheet in the Business Plan Financials Excel Template where the information can be found

Projected Sales

Sales Projections  worksheet

Personnel Overview

Setup and Staff Budgeting worksheets

Financing to Date and Funds you plan to raise from investors

Capital Investments worksheet

Use of Funds

Capital Expenditures worksheet

Break-Even Analysis

Break-Even worksheet

Projected Profits

Income Statement worksheet

Important: do not copy tables from the Excel document in your discussion response.  This is an overview of the key financials.

Post at least one substantive comment to another student’s post.

Notes

• You will use the information from this discussion post in the Week 10 assignment, Business Plan—Final.
  • A bullet point under Part 1 asks you to incorporate financial information that will help to convince the investors.

Note: Start your response with a brief description of your business (no more than 3 sentences). Specify your company name, what business you are in, and the specific product or service you plan to sell.

Reply Quote 2 months agoANDREA BANTO INSTRUCTOR MANAGERTo help you get started with Week 8 Discussion-review this!COLLAPSEOverall Rating:

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This week’s discussion is a written summary of the key financials investors would like to know before deciding to look at your business plan in more detail.

Do not copy tables from the Excel document in the discussion response.

Start your response with a brief description of your business (company name, what you do, and what you sell). This description should not be longer than 3 sentences. 

Discuss the following and use bold headings to organize your response. You can find the numbers you need in your Excel document your completed last week (Business Plan Financials). Check the table provided in the discussion for the exact worksheet of where the information can be located.  Be sure to include a brief description of your business.

1.Projected Sales

• Specify your how many product lines or service options you offer for sales, then specify what these are.
• Specify the total projected sales per year for years one and two (from the sales projections worksheet). You can mention your goal to reach sales of over 1 million by the end of the second year.
• The projected sales will help the investors understand your sources of revenue (product lines or service options) and your projected sales.

2.Personnel Overview

• Clarify how many employees you currently have and how many you plan to have in the future.
• Specify how many people you have in your management team and their roles. Mention the key skills and experience for each person on your management team (one sentence per person focusing on the most important information). This will help your investors understand you have a competent and experienced team to grow the business.

3.Funds to Date and Funds you plan to raise

• Provide a list of the funds you already have (loans, money in the bank, etc.)
• Provide a list of the funds you are planning to raise from the investors and the equity you plan to give in exchange for these funds. Remember, we are writing the business plan for this purpose.

4.Use of Funds

• Provide a list of expenses you plan to make (major expenses) with the funds you plan to raise from the investors. Include the cost for each major expense. They would want to know what you plan to do with the money.

5.Break-Even Analysis

• The break-even number will clarify how much you need to sell just to cover your expenses.
• Provide just the average monthly break-even number for years 1 and 2.

Projected Profits

• Specify the projected yearly profits for the first and second year from the income statement.
• The projected profits will indicate when the company will become profitable and how much these profits are expected to be.

Check the video below for an overview of this week’s discussion.

Goal: Submit by Wednesday.

  300-500 words and APA format

This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

Suppose a researcher wanted to use the secondary data found in the gss.sav data file to determine if males or females use the Internet more. Go to the Resources area of the class to download the files that you will need to complete your assignments each week. Open the gss.sav data set in SPSS to review the variables sex, useweb, and webhrs.

Use Variable View to consider whether the data are nominal, ordinal, or interval, and suggest which type of SPSS analysis might be most appropriate for these questions and why that would be the best choice.

Assignment: Accessing Information About Evidence-Based Practices

The first steps toward narrowing the gap between research and practice are recognizing that one exists and educating oneself and others. Social workers must realize the benefits and eliminate the misconceptions surrounding evidence-based practice. In the Bradley episode featured in the resources, the social worker combines her assessment of Tiffani Bradley’s individual situation with her knowledge of research to evaluate her supervisor’s recommended intervention. Now that the social worker has recognized a gap, she/he/they need to access potentially relevant information for a specific case and critically analyze for its applicability to that case. This week’s Assignment allows you to practice these critical next steps in the Bradley family case.

To prepare for this Assignment, review Episode 4 of the Bradley family case study. Develop a list with 2–3 researchable questions that you could use to find evidence about the efficacy of 12-step programs or other treatments for substance abuse in adolescents. Then, using the resources provided, search for two evidence-based interventions that would be appropriate for Tiffani Bradley. Be sure to consider quality of research, readiness for dissemination, replications, and costs.

By Day 7

Submit a 2- to 3-page paper that includes the following:

• Summaries of the two interventions and their respective research regarding effectiveness
• Recommendations for Tiffani’s social worker that address the following:
  • Factors to consider when choosing between the two interventions
  • The social work skills that the staff would require to implement the intervention
  • The training required to implement each intervention
• An evaluation of evidenced-based practice based on your reaction to the experience, in which you address the following questions:
  • Would you, as a beginning researcher, have enough knowledge to benefit from researching evidence-based practices? Why or why not?
  • How might the research that you conducted increase your confidence in the intervention with Tiffani?
  • Is the information provided enough to make a decision regarding interventions? Why or why not?
• Appropriate APA citations in your writing

Skills Inventory and Gap Analysis

[WLO: 2] [CLOs: 3, 4, 5, 6]

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 18, and Chapter 19 from your textbook; the Week 2 Weekly Lecture; Making PowerPoint Slides: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Bad Slides PowerPoint presentation; the article The Challenge of Exceptional Communication; and the web page Self Assessment: Learn About Your Personality and Strengths (Links to an external site.).

In preparation for the Final Paper as well as having real-world applicability, this week’s assignment is a PowerPoint presentation that will provide you an opportunity to create a career skills inventory and associated gap analysis. Using the article The Challenge of Exceptional Communication as a guide, the goal for this assignment is to professionally present your current skills and identifiable gaps in existing skills to promote yourself as an ideal candidate for the career of your choice. The information derived from this assignment should accurately reflect your existing skills.

In your presentation,

• Describe the skills you possess that make you an ideal candidate for your chosen career.
• Identify any gaps in your existing skill set that an employer may require.
• Explain how you plan on honing these gaps in your existing skill set.
• Explain how you would effectively and persuasively communicate this gap in a manner that would still qualify you for your career choice.

The Making PowerPoint Slides: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Bad Slides PowerPoint is a good resource to use for tips and guidelines for creating an effective PowerPoint presentation.

The Skills Inventory and Gap Analysis presentation

• Must be five to six slides in length (not including title and references slides), formatted according to APA style as outlined in the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center’s How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Links to an external site.) resource, and include substantial speaker notes (no less than 100 words per slide in the speaker notes).
• Must include a separate title slide with the following:
  • Title of presentation
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must use at least two scholarly or credible sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
  • To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view this University of Arizona Global Campus Library Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the University of Arizona Global Campus Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper