by Margot Brandlin
Year-end always brings a significant list of financial tasks to complete. We start thinking about closing the books, organizing taxes, selling investments, enrolling employees in benefits and establishing budgets.
When your list is particularly long, one specific task might seem to loom quite large. If this happens, it’s likely that you procrastinate. And one particular area of procrastination is the budget. In fact, many business owners are so determined to avoid putting together their budgets that they’ll do just about anything to push it under the rug.
Here are some common excuses for not organizing a budget, and why you should make one anyway.
Excuse 1: Budgets are too confining; I can’t stick with my initial estimates for 12 months. It doesn’t make sense to create a budget and then disregard it, but here’s news: your budget is yours. You don’t file it with the IRS, you’re not legally bound by its contents and you (hopefully) didn’t make a pinky-swear promise to adhere to it with unwavering exactness. By some estimates, almost 80% of companies that create budgets don’t change them even once during the fiscal year. That’s not how things work in real life. You can and should change your budget as circumstances require. Budgeting for a shorter timeframe, such as quarterly, might even be a viable option for you.
Excuse 2: I won’t be able to be as flexible with unforeseen circumstances or a crisis if I have a budget. In fact, the reality is that if a company has created a budget, it tends to be more proactive and flexible than one without a budget. If you actively track your progress as you move toward a specific goal, you’ll be able to foresee any problems much easier with a budget that without one. You’ll be able to react to the situation while it’s less of a problem and easier to manage. Sometimes, you can even predict and forestall problems before they occur.
Excuse 3: The budgeting process is too complicated and time consuming. Well, this is actually true for too many companies, but it doesn’t have to be. Many companies spend months agonizing over their budgets and devote upwards of 20% of management’s time to their creation. Although a certain level of detail is needed if the process is going to be effective, budgets can be fairly simple. And the time you invest in planning upfront is never wasted; it’s time you save down the road reacting on the fly to decisions that need to be made anyway.
Excuse 4: My industry is in flux and ever changing, so I can’t commit to a budget. In fact, every industry is in flux at every moment. Your industry is the same as every other, and you need a budget regardless. Of course, you can’t predict unknown events, such as if gas prices will rise, whether laws will be passed that will impact your profit margin, or whether you’ll need to hire new staff, but you can still use a budget to plan and set goals over the long haul. For this, you need to plan to take action at given times, which is under your control. You need to be able to look at your business with a critical eye and decide what you want to achieve in the next 12 months. If you can’t do that, then it’s time to sit down and figure out why that’s true.
Excuse 5: Budgets don’t mean anything. Everyone just creates the numbers they want so that the picture they paint is perfect. It’s true that if you construct your budget based on unrealistic terms and goals in hopes of inspiring yourself to actually reach them, in fact this is a sure way to invite frustration and failure into your life. In fact, one Internet post compared budgets to pornography, saying that they were a fantasy based on what the author wanted the world to look like but with no connection to reality, and “designed to titillate, stimulate and motivate the reader, but ultimately resulting in a sense of alienation and despair.” If this is your intention when you set up your budget, it’s of no use to you. To help you, your budget needs to be based on reality.
Excuse 6: I have a budget that I keep in my head instead of on paper. Of course, it’s good if you can keep a running total of a few figures in your head for quick access if you need them. However, it’s not realistic to be able to do this for every expense, number and project. You might be able to do it for a while until your business reaches a certain size, but eventually it will be too much to keep all the details straight just in your head. In addition, if you have people working for you, you’re keeping them from taking some responsibility and accountability for your business’ success or failure along with you. Even if you think you’re of a small enough size that you don’t need a budget right now, you will someday. Start good habits now and begin to keep one while your business is small so that it will be second nature when your business grows.
Finally, remember that a budget is really just a plan. It makes you step out of the small details that bombard you on a daily basis and forces you to look at your business from a strategic standpoint, so that you have to take note of where you are in comparison to where you want to go. If you don’t establish a budget as a formal tool to prod you into action, it’s likely that you’ll put it on the back burner in favor of dealing with the other problems that crop up daily and demand you take care of them.
So what’s your excuse? Did your dog eat your budget? Do you need to vacuum your overstuffed sofa so that you won’t have time today? Did your mother-in-law coming to visit from Idaho? Or are you ready to stop making excuses, sit down and get to work?
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