Business owners often have a love hate relationship with budgeting.\u00a0 The Fortune 1000 would not think about joining the next fiscal year WITHOUT a budget, so why is it so hard for the smaller business to do this time honored process.\u00a0 Here are the three areas I see that cause owners to get stuck.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Forecasting<\/strong>.\u00a0 To make a budget realistic, you need to forecast revenue for the following year and spending.\u00a0 What will your city, state, internet\/international world look like for your business during the next 12 months?\u00a0 Sometimes a local business environment may be great, but the state has problems or vise versa.\u00a0 What will your spending habits be?\u00a0 Money Magazine<\/a>, Entrepreneur Magazine<\/a> and Inc Magazine<\/a> all have great articles in their December issues to get you thinking about what these experts think 2013 will bring.\u00a0 Remember, reviewing 2012 expenses for areas to trim or enhance.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Believing in the Plan<\/strong>.\u00a0 Part of a budget usually means we have a plan.\u00a0 A business plan that is driven by results will cause us to think about what resources will be needed to make the plan happen.\u00a0 Think of the plan<\/a> as a map to getting where you want to be.\u00a0 A simple strategic plan will start with goals for your business that will be supported by the budgets.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Being Accountable.<\/strong>\u00a0 Becoming accountable sometimes is more than just saying “I’ll look at my business numbers weekly<\/em>“.\u00a0 Often, we have to set appointments with someone else to see that this happens.\u00a0 If you are the sole owner of your company, you may want to find a trusted person or group to help you stay on target. This could be as simple as reviewing your plan with your accountant or coach.\u00a0 Maybe you want the minds of masters and a mastermind group<\/a> is in your plans for 2013.\u00a0 Some owners are good at just scheduling a meeting with themselves – if that is you, schedule it now in your calendar for all of 2013.\u00a0 The template I use for my meetings is Monthly Plan Review<\/a> and it is remembered in my Google\/Outlook calendar and reminds me – simple and in my face!\u00a0 My meeting consists of filling in the blanks.<\/p>\n Making plans does take time, but often in the end the numbers will prove to you that it was worth the effort as the rewards of a planned business usually trounce the rewards of the unplanned.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Business owners often have a love hate relationship with budgeting.\u00a0 The Fortune 1000 would not think about joining the next fiscal year WITHOUT a budget, so why is it so hard for the smaller business to do this time honored process.\u00a0 Here are the three areas I see that cause owners to get stuck. 1.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15,25,1],"tags":[46,44,43,42,45],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benchmarking","category-business-planning","category-goals","category-uncategorized","tag-46","tag-budgets","tag-forecast","tag-goals-2","tag-plans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3240,"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions\/3240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.changinglanes.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}