Course Lab Overview

This course uses a fictitious business and the associated spreadsheets that might be used in making business decisions.  Each week, you will expand on your business idea and use Excel to calculate your business needs.  As you progress through the weekly assignment, you will be presented with knowledge checks in order to gauge your progress and accuracy of completing the Excel task.  You should use the questions to inform if you need to adjust your spreadsheet accordingly.

Project Background

You have been baking most of your life and your friends, family, and now many of the people in your local community ask you to bake cakes, cupcakes, and cookies and are willing to pay you for your delicacies. You have been working out of your home part-time while still holding down a full-time job, but you wonder if you could possibly make this a real business. The goal of this course project will be to complete weekly excel spreadsheets that will allow you to make the business decisions that you will need to make to determine the viability of this full-time business, and the associated analyses to effectively run your business.

Each week, you will complete the spreadsheet activity using the provided assignment directions. Once you finish your activity for each part, complete the Canvas assignment where you will submit your completed spreadsheet(s) and you’ll answer questions about your completed assignment. The questions will demonstrate your understanding of the excel technique that you will be applying at the different stages.

Weekly Excel Exercises

Each week, you will create spreadsheet(s) that will answer many of the business questions you will have.

Week 1 – Personal monthly budget to analyze if you can start this bakery business while continuing to pay your bills and live comfortably.

Week 2 – Starting Inventory to detail a list of items that you need in order to get started, and share with others for review.

Week 3 – Overhead Cost Analysis to estimate your operating costs and determine how much to charge for your baked goods to be profitable.

Week 4 – Food Cost Analysis to evaluate suppliers and ingredients to get the best price for your cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. You’ll determine how to distribute the ingredient costs to three different recipes and determine the cost of an individual serving.

Week 5 – Pricing Analysis to determine profit margin for each sale in order to pay your bills, overhead, and personal salary.

Week 6 – Financial Analysis to evaluate additional business costs based on adding delivery options to the overall business.