FIT businesses budget. Now is the perfect time to look back on what happened in your business in 2008, and put together your best estimates about what will happen in 2009. Budgeting forces you to focus on what might happen, what might change in your business, and how all of that will impact you and your general strategy and planning. The exercise of creating a budget makes you define the relationship between the various things that impact your business – if my sales decline in this economy, what do I do about my staffing? What is my equipment purchase budget look like for this year? Should I invest more in advertising and marketing in 2009?
If you are using QuickBooks, you can actually create a budget using last year’s data and then just tweak as needed. So actually putting the budget together is pretty simple – the catch is to get the numbers “right”.
Once the budget is in QuickBooks, monitor your actual performance to what you budgeted. This will help you revise your budget and understand in detail how your income and expenses may vary along the way. It was also help you see how some trends in your business are going to back up and cause you more challenges down the line.
So commit today – take 30 minutes and create a 2009 budget in QuickBooks. Then commit to spending 30 minutes a month reviewing your actual performance versus your budget. It doesn’t have to be perfect – just do it. Your business will benefit tremendously!
Related articles by Zemanta
- Good Business Budgeting Can Help Your Business Grow (dohertyassoc.com)
Related posts: