Pivoting Your Business Model in a Pandemic

By Rachel Organist

As a small business ourselves, we at Workman Forensics understand that dealing with changing health and safety guidelines, new supply chain and staffing issues, and evolving customer concerns and preferences has many business owners struggling to make their pre-coronavirus business model work in a post-coronavirus world. We know others are asking themselves questions like, “Can I afford to reopen my business under current guidelines?” and “Could shifting to a delivery-based model work for my business?”

As part of our mission to serve small business owners with resources during this time, we’ve created a free Excel worksheet that calculates the revenue needed to cover costs and compare different scenarios. We hope you find the worksheet useful as you work to creatively solve problems and make strategic decisions for yourself, your business and its stakeholders.

How to use the worksheet

To use the worksheet, you’ll need Microsoft Excel. Click here to download the file from our website and get started.

Most cells are password protected to ensure all calculations function as intended, but you can enter the amounts and information for your business in the green cells and leave notes for yourself in the yellow space below each scenario.

The first section of the worksheet is for fixed costs, or costs that don’t change depending on how much business you do. A common example of a fixed cost is rent. You’ll need to enter a monthly amount for these costs. The next section is for variable costs, or costs that change with business volume. In this section, you’ll need to enter a number of units and a per unit cost. Common examples of variable costs are hourly employees, or supplies or food inventory.  Note: If you’d prefer to do these calculations elsewhere and just enter a total monthly amount here, just set the No. of Units to 1 and enter your total monthly amount in the “Unit Cost” column.

The worksheet sums these costs to calculate the minimum monthly sales you’ll need to cover your fixed and variable costs, before subtracting delivery service or credit card fees. You can enter percentage or monthly amounts for these fees in the third section.

Finally, your minimum gross monthly sales will be calculated in the fourth section. If you wish, you can enter the number of days you’re typically open per month to calculate minimum gross sales for each day.

That’s it! If you’d prefer to see instructions on using the template in video format, a how-to video is available on our YouTube channel. And if you have feedback on the template, you can share it with us via email.