Business Budgeting Tips

A Budget is a great way to manage your business but also making a budget is an onerous task for you or your finance team, here are some tips to help you better understand how to craft business budget..

Planning for the future is an essential piece to the survival of your business, especially in an uncertain economic climate. Before the beginning of each financial year, normally in March, April, depends on size and scale of your business, you should have a sense of where money is going to come in from and where you're going to spend it in a year. To this end, putting together an annual budget can help you determine whether you have enough money to fund operations, expand the business, generate income and return to shareholders. The annual budget process can be an onerous task and managers and accountants might sit down all days and nights to work out, so here are the recommended models for creating your business budget.


Revenue Part

Revenue Projection Model
Business lives on the revenue it creates. A good place to start the budgeting process is with the Revenue Projection Model. It is used to forecast business revenues under different conditions. Your budget should reflect the anticipated dollar value of sales and services. The Revenue Projection Model provides a comprehensive Excel forecasting tool that analyses and manipulates the price, quantity, and percentage increase to give different possible scenarios. You can customize this tool to meet your company's needs.


Sales Forecasting Guide
If you have several revenue streams, e.g different product lines, various stores or branches in different locations. Your budget should include anticipated income from each of them. Categorizing each stream allows you to identify which parts of your business are profitable and which are not. If your business is a start-up, you may not be familiar with creating a sales forecast. This customizable PowerPoint presentation can help educate you and your managers on the process.

Sales Forecasting Model The Sales Forecasting Model is a form used by companies to predict future sales based on past sales performance and an analysis of expected market conditions. The Sales Forecasting Model is used to organize data that will be used to analyse future sales.

Sales Plan Template
Once you have a sales forecast in place you can use the Sales Plan Template to implement the forecast. The Sales Plan Template is a comprehensive template used by salespersons and organizations for creating a sales plan. The Sales Plan Template includes descriptions for the necessary sections: sales targets, market potential, sales strategy, execution details, budget, sales force compensation, sales force training and a time-line for execution.


Expenditure Part

Expense Budget Template
After you revenue model figure out how much you are making, you can determine how much you can spend. The Expense Budget is a spreadsheet used to track expenses throughout the financial year. The Expense Budget lists the most common expense categories and allows you to enter monthly totals, which are then added for an annual total and a monthly average. This document is used on an ongoing basis and is customizable to your company's usage.

Capital Part

Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) Template
The capital budget helps you figure out how much money you need to input in place new equipment or procedures to launch new products or increase production or services. This budget estimates the value of capital purchases your business needs to grow and increase revenues. If your business involves jobs or projects, budgeting will probably include aspects of both product and service revenue budgeting. The Capital Budgeting Analysis tool can be used to determine the cash flow of a project and how it will contribute to the firm's value. This tool provides an Excel spreadsheet model and allows you to organize different project metrics, such as payback period, profitability index, internal rate of return, and net present value

Cash Flow

Twelve Month Cash Flow Spreadsheet
A cash flow budget details the amount of cash you collect and pay out. This is generally tallied on a monthly basis and the Twelve-Month Cash Flow Spreadsheet is ideal to use for monthly tracking. In this budget, you track your sales and other receivables from income sources and contrast them against how much you pay to suppliers and in expenses. The Twelve-Month Cash Flow Spreadsheet template provides a comprehensive table in a business plan to evaluate all expenditure categories. A positive cash flow is essential to grow your business.

Annual Cash Flow Forecast
To prepare for the inevitable cash flow peaks and troughs that all businesses go through, you can turn to the Cash Flow Forecast tool. It is used to predict annual profits versus end-of-year debt. The Cash
Cash flow problems are the major cause of SME failure in Australia, developing & maintaining healthy cash flow is critical for your business.
Flow Forecast provides a guide for tracking which arms of your business are most profitable, and show which creditors are owed various amounts of the company's future profits. The forecast helps set reasonable goals for the company's next fiscal year.

Asset Part

Depreciation Calculator Spreadsheet
It's a sad fact, but many of the assets you've purchased for your business – computers, machinery, vehicles – have a finite life. In order to account for this – and plan ahead for replacing those assets—you need to calculate the depreciation expense for all your assets. The Depreciation Calculator Spreadsheet contains formulas to help you through the process so you can factor this expense into your budget and give you a clear picture of your business asset status quo

Asset Depreciation Schedule
The Asset Depreciation Schedule is used to calculate depreciation expense using straight-line depreciation method or diminishing value depreciation method. Using straight-line depreciation method means the residual (salvage) value of the asset is first estimated. Thereafter the asset, minus salvage value, is divided by the useful life of the asset. The resulting value is deducted for each year of the asset's life. Using diminishing value depreciation method is the amount of depreciation is worked out on the adjusted tax value of the asset, this value is the original cost less any depreciation already claimed in previous years. The Asset Depreciation Schedule is divided into major asset categories such as buildings, equipment, hardware, and software.

P&L Projection

12-Month Profit and Loss Projection Worksheet
This profit and loss (P&L) projection is not intended to be a detailed financial statement. Instead, it's meant to act as a guide to help you forecast your company's sales and expenses. This Profit and Loss Projection Worksheet is used to forecast profits and losses for up to 12 months into the future, making it an ideal tool for yearly budget planning.

Profit and Loss Projection Model
The Profit and Loss Projection Model is a planning tool to help you to predict sales and cost for the whole year in finer detail than the 12-month worksheet. It is a comprehensive worksheet for monthly and quarterly sales and expenses based on all available data and information

You do not have to use the same depreciation method for all your assets, but you must use whatever method you choose for an asset for the full year. The method used for an asset can be changed from year to year


By Chen Yang