Consider the following scenario:

About a little over a year ago I started a coffee shop business. I do have some data related to sales figures for the last 12 months. The business is promising. By the end of the first year I paid myself a monthly salary of $4,000 and the business also had an end-of-year $42,000 after tax profit of which I decided to write myself a check for half of the amount and the rest decided to keep in the business to grow it further.

What I have in mind is a second location for which I will need an initial investment of $75,000. It seems I will have to borrow upwards of $50,000 from a bank. When I apply to my current bank, they told me they want to see my business plan with a section dedicated to forecasting sales figures since my business have only a 12-month sales history.

Answer the following questions each in at least 1 paragraph:

How do you suggest I should come up with these forecasted values?

How far into the future should I go in my forecast?

How can I convince the bank that my numbers are reliable?

How can I identify patterns (trendlines, periodic ups and downs) in the dataset? Do they matter at all?

Here are some numbers if youd like to play with if you want to:

Month	Sales	Before Tax Monthly Profit
Jun 2017	$22,000	$4,000
Jul 2017	$22,500	$4,500
Aug 2017	$23,000	$5,000
Sep 2017	$23,000	$6,000
Oct 2017	$20,000	$5,000
Nov 2017	$21,000	$4,500
Dec 2017	$19,000	$4,000
Jan 2018	$19,500	$3,500
Feb 2018	$18,000	$3,000
Mar 2018	$19,000	$3,500
Apr 2018	$21,000	$4,000
May 2018	$22,500	$5,000