Investment project assessment in small business

Procjene investicijskih projekata kroz tehnike budžetiranja kapitala najčešće su korištene te prilagođene velikim poduzećima, ustrojenim kao dionička društva. Međutim, potreba za financijskim izračunom isplativosti ulaganja u određeni projekt ili pothvat u malim poduzećima više se ne može smatrati luksuzom, već osnovnim alatom za donošenje odluka o prihvaćanju ili odbijanju realizacije istog. Velik broj propalih poduzeća govori o tome da u njihovoj poslovnoj politici ozbiljno nedostaju ključni pojmovi poznavanja ekonomije, kako od samog planiranja i izračuna isplativosti pokretanja poslovanja, tako i do prepoznavanja trenutka i donošenja odluke o prestanku ili pak promjeni djelatnosti poslovanja u uvjetima loših financijskih pokazatelja. U dosadašnjoj praksi potkrijepljenoj analizama poslovanja malih i srednjih poduzeća na području Europe i Amerike evidentno je da se budžetiranje kapitala ne koristi u dovoljnoj mjeri ili čak uopće prilikom donošenja investicijskih odluka. Najčešće korištena metoda je originalno razdoblje povrata, dakle ne uzima se u obzir vremenska vrijednost novca. Glavni razlozi se očituju u tome što se mala i srednja poduzeća znatno razlikuju od velikih dioničkih društava, prvenstveno po strukturi kapitala i menadžmentu, što znači da se financiraju vlastitim ili pozajmljenim novcem članova obitelji ili prijatelja te nemaju stručan kadar za upravljanje financijama. Ovim radom je obuhvaćen pojam investicija i investicijskog projekta, trošak kapitala, novčanih tokova i odabira projekta kroz stručnu literaturu, te su detaljno opisane metode budžetiranja kapitala. U primjeru je dan izračun isplativosti ulaganja u projekt otvaranja restorana od strane malog poduzeća kroz tri moguća scenarija, korištenjem konvencionalnih metoda budžetiranja kapitala, nadopunjeno stablom odlučivanja kao metodom dinamiziranja i uzimanja u obzir dodatnih okolnosti u samom životnom vijeku projekta.Project investment assessments by using capital budgeting techniques are at most in use in big companies, usually founded as Publicly Limited Company (PLC). However, the need of financial calculation of project or venture investment cost-effectiveness in small companies can no longer be considered luxury, but a basic tool for decision making regarding accepting or rejecting of the investment instead. A large number of crashed companies confirm that their business politics seriously lack the basics of economics, starting from planning and business opening effectiveness calculations, to recognizing the moment and making a decision about aborting, or at least changing the business activity in case of bad financial reports. Nowadays practice, supported by small and medium sized enterprises analyses in the region of Europe and America, show that capital budgeting methods are not used enough or at all, while making investment decisions. The most used method is the original period of return, hence not considering the time value of money. The main reasons for this is identified as the fact that small and medium sized companies are significantly different from big, PLC companies, mostly by the capital and management structure, which means they are financed privately by their owner or by money borrowed from family members or friends and have no experts dealing with finances. This paperwork has covered the terms of investments and investment projects, the cost of capital, cash-flows and project selection by use of the scientific literature, and describes the capital budgeting methods in detail. The example described in this paperwork considers the cost effectiveness of opening and running restaurant by a small company, based on three scenarios, by using the conventional capital budgeting methods, and complemented by decision tree as a dynamizing method, regarding all extra circumstances in life time of a project