Business Mentoring Tip #45 – Budget from the bottom up

March 15, 2012Post by Laura Humphreys

It’s budget time!  If you haven’t already set your budget for 2013/14 year… now’s the time.  There is an entire seminar in the liber8yourbusiness programme to walk you though the best way to do this.  Here are the key steps:

Decide what profit you want/need to make this year.

Then put in your expenses for the year, using last year’s expenses plus some extra for growth.

This will tell you what your Gross Profit needs to be (Gross Profit minus expenses = profit).

The put in your cost of sales based on last year’s margin (Sales minus cost of sales = Gross Profit.  The margin is the % difference).

This will tell you what your sales income needs to be to meet profit targets.

Then spread all the numbers out across the 12 months, allowing for a ramp up across the year as your sales and marketing plans kick in.

This is your budget.  Beside each budgeted figure each month there should be an ‘actual’ column. This is where you put in what actually happens each month so you can see how you are tracking against budget.

Of course you need an awesome plan to achieve your targets each month. That’s the game… set the targets, plan the attack and achieve them.

If you want to know more on how to do this and all the planning you need to achieve targets.. join the  liber8yourbusiness programme!