Budget streamlining
A hectic week last week after my return from holiday but all the e-mails and voicemails have now been dealt with.
The decision by the Monetary Policy Committee to maintain interest rates at their current level was expected but has done nothing to kick start business confidence as the pound slides against both the dollar and euro – ok in one firm where we currently have surplus funds in our dollar accounts but not in another company where a high proportion of our costs are denominated in Euros.
Time to look again at foreign currency protection I think.
This month I need to focus on preparing the 2008/9 budget for one of my businesses – a multi-site, people based business with a number of separate income streams.
Every year we try to simplify the process but never seem to avoid a plethora of multi-tabbed Excel spreadsheets running usually to version 7! This year the plan is to adopt standard cost models across all the activities and then add site-specific exceptions thereafter; this should expedite the process.
But as always it will be the new business development projections that will cause the most debate and controversy.
At what stage will business confidence start to build and what growth assumptions should we make? What scope is there to increase the level of existing contracts? What level of cost increases should we build in for staff, fuel and travel? Should be an interesting few weeks.
