1. 8 STEPS TO CREATING
A SMALL BUSINESS BUDGET
A business without a budget won’t work — at least not for long.
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2. 1.CLEAN UP QUICKBOOKS
Open QuickBooks and find where payments were made twice in a month, and not
at all in the next month.
Get rid of expense categories that you don’t use, or haven’t used, in a while.
The more accurate and complete your historical data is, the better your budget
will be.
Also, import actual data from QuickBooks every month into your budget to be
able to monitor your progress.
3. 2. EXPORTYOUR CHART OF ACCOUNTS AND
HISTORICAL REVENUE AND EXPENSES
Base your future expenses on your past expenses.
Use the same account and expense category structure you have in QuickBooks so
you can export actual data for monitoring progress.
Exporting that data from QuickBooks is the quickest way to get started:
Go to Reports > Company & Financial > Profit & Loss Std and set the dates for the
period you want to export, then export to Excel. Bam!You just started your
budget.
4. 3. CREATEYOUR COMPANY ROSTER
Since salaries are the largest expense for most small businesses, you’ll want to
forecast it in detail.
Make a list of your employees and their pay, and forecast that out month-by-
month over the next year.
When you look at each person, consider whether they are compensated up to
market rates.What kind of raise might you give them this year (and when)?
Building a detailed roster helps you forecast this important expense accurately.
5. 4. CREATEYOUR SALES FORECAST
Your sales forecast drives every decision in your budget, so it’s important to create
it as accurately and thoughtfully as possible.
The sales forecast will start with estimating current and past customer sales, line
by line.
Then, you forecast sales to new customers by forecasting typical items.
This data will form the milestones to measure your progress through the year.
6. 5. CREATEYOUR EXPENSE FORECAST
Now that you know your revenue, what will your expenses be?
Each expense line has something that drives it.You don’t just spend money, you
spend it because you need something.
So what need is driving that expense?
Figuring out the expense driver helps create a formula for each expense line,
which accurately forecasts expenses and keeps the whole budget interactive.
That way, when you change your sales or staffing assumptions, those changes are
reflected in the budget.
7. 6. LINK IT ALLTOGETHER
Now that you have a revenue and expense forecast, you can hook it all together
and see what the profit looks like.
Do you like that number? Does that provide enough for you to reach your goals?
If not, what do you want to change, sell more of, or spend less on?
Make the adjustments you need in order to get your ideal number.
8. 7. ADJUST AND FINALIZE
If you’ve made adjustments to reach a profit number that matches your goal,
make sure you know how to make those numbers a reality.
If you need to cut expenses, where will you spend less?
If you raised sales, how are you going to find the leads, or close the sales, in order
to stay on track with that goal?
Once you’ve got all that down, you’ve got your final budget.
But the most important thing is to USE your budget to monitor your performance
and make decisions, which is the next step.
9. 8. MONITOR AND ADJUST
Each month as you finish up your accounting, you need to export your actual
results and compare them to your budget.
Once you do that, you can analyze how you are doing and understand what
changes need to be made to stay on track.
This is where your budget really starts to pay for itself.
You will know so much more about your business with a solid budget.
10. VISIT US
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