RESOURCES

Budgets are often thought of as a chore: prepared once a year to keep funders happy, or even less often to justify a new project. But with a little more attention to keep the budget up to date as the year progresses and you can get useful information for making decisions to grow profitably.

I kicked off 2021 with a series of posts about how to get more out of your budgeting:
1. What to expect from your budget.
2. The benefits of keeping your budget up to date.
3. Managing spend with culture and communication.
4. How to budget for effective marketing spend.
5.How to incorporate investment in successful innovation in your business budgets.

A lot of the work that I do focuses on managing businesses’ cash: after all without money to pay the bills everything grinds to a halt rapidly.

In order to see what’s likely to happen in your cashflow you need a forecast. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start, but you can download my guide to creating your own forecast here.

Cashflow planning takes time to perfect and as new challenges appear you may feel like you never reach a finished forecast. You can read more advice about managing and improving your cashflow here.

The businesses that approach me are usually established, with a small team and turnover of upwards of £1m. However every business benefits from having good financial information. I am always happy to help micro businesses so if you have questions then feel free to call for a (free!) chat.

In addition to this I collaborate with other advisors as a “Business Activist” in the pages of North Devon’s Business Action Magazine. These are short, practical answers to common questions that face micro business owners. You can read my contributions here or check out the magazine.