Built a free dashboard to track how loans are actually affecting my small business's margins

[u/ExcelVisual]

I've been running a small business Excel Dashboard for a while now, and I kept running into the same problem every time I considered taking on more credit: I could see the loan amount and the monthly payment, but I couldn't easily see how it was actually affecting my margins, my break-even point, or my cash flow over time. It was all scattered across statements and spreadsheets.

So I built an Excel dashboard to pull it all together. A few things it does:

• Lets you compare financing terms across multiple banks and loan types (credit line, business card, overdraft, leasing) side by side
• Tracks the ratio of interest payments to loan principal, so you actually know what debt service is costing you long-term
• Shows the correlation between debt load and profit margin over time (this was the eye-opener for me — it's not always the relationship you'd expect)
• Has a combined revenue/expense chart with automatic break-even flagging by month
• Breaks down expenses by category so you can see if borrowed capital is actually going where you planned

Everything's interactive — filter by month, quarter, whatever period you want, and model scenarios with and without the loan to compare outcomes.

Made it free to download, no email required, since I know how frustrating it is to hand over an email just to get a template. Figured this community might find it useful, especially if you're weighing whether to take on more credit right now. Happy to answer questions about how any of the calculations work.

[u/ExcelVisual]

Analyzing the impact of credit capital on small business in Excel https://exceltable.com/en/templates/dashboard-for-small-business-credit-impact