[PureHarvest]

This format is poor, but on an excel sheet it reads easier.

The point is to nail down every step you make and every material you buy/use.

It all adds up and then you can plug in your projected yield times what your selling price is going to be.

From there you will be able to see what it will take to meet your income goals.

Everything recalculates automatically as you change the numbers in the cell, so its cool to play around with what ifs.

What if my yield is 12 lbs per plant instead of 10? What if its 8? What weight per plant do I need to hit to at least break even?

What if my per plant cost is .35 instead of .85

What if I use less labor for the transplanting?

You can run all of these and more and come up with goals.

At the end of the year you can plug in your real world numbers (you did track all your inputs as your went along, right?!)

Then you can evaluate where you can save money, improve your methods, or increase your crop size, or seek out ways to get more per pound.

I got all this from the book (comes with companion CD with all the spreadsheets) The Organic Farmer's Business Handbook by Richard Wiswall.

I know budget templates are nothing new, but this one clicked with me because it is geared to farming and the guy has all the categories already lined out to guide you along. You can edit it to meet your needs.
He has an example budget for like 20 major crops and it is really interesting to see which crops are more valuable than other given the same growing area (two 250' rows). You can go in and just edit your numbers into the cells for each crop example he has if you want to make it really easy
So once you come up with your personal base growing unit area, and plug in your numbers, you can rank one crop versus another and make good decisions on why you are going to grow which crops.
This guy makes the most per his base area (two 350' rows) with Parsley, Basil, and Kale.
He loses money if he were to grow Sweet Corn, bush beans or snap peas.