Optimize Your Budget in 2017

Your business’ budget can be divided into two: cash and operating budget. Your business’ cash budget will focus on expenses and revenue estimates. A cash budget usually has entries for cash transactions that took place, such as salary payments and vendor invoices.

An operating budget is similar to the cash budget, only that it covers more details and has entries for sales, operating costs, production, and sometimes salaries.

However, regardless of the type of budget, most businesses will need to also follow long-term and short-term budget plans. Because budgets can be planned for different time periods, such as quarterly or yearly or longer, elements such as your capital outlay may need to be categorized differently in what would be longer-term budgets.

Whatever the kind of budget, it has to leave your business with cash adequate to run profitably and build a healthy financial report. Optimizing your budget is one way of ensuring this.

Optimizing your budget should be a primary item in your to-do list for your business. Given below are a few proven ways in which you can optimize your business budget:

1. Create a plan and follow it diligently

Most successful small businesses that made it big follow this mantra: create a business plan and ensure your accounts are in order. Many small businesses neglect to do this. But managing your accounts is the first step towards ensuring you’re in control of your expenses and actual income. Your business is already making profits, but how much of the revenue earned falls into place as per your budget? You may be surprised to know that it is not your profits that predict business health; it is your business’ cash flow statement. If you’re in control of your business accounts, this is one area you will not need to worry about. If not, there is still time: you can choose to seek help from professionals to help you with your accounts to ensure your expenses are not weakening you.

2. Increase the inflow of money; invest intelligently

As basic as this may sound, businesses can succeed rapidly through effective investment. Once you have made a budget plan, following it also includes investing money smartly so that it leads to effective returns. When raising money for your venture, ensure you take some time to choose which path you want to take. There are different ways in which to raise money, including pursuing angel investors, or asking for stakeholders to pitch in with money or even taking a loan as an emergency inflow of cash. At times, you may want to utilize a combination of the different ways to ensure you don’t fall short.

You may also want to consider selling off assets that are no longer performing as expected or that have outlived their shelf-lives.

3. Revamp your sales strategy to retain business

One of the ways to ensure more money is by bringing it in through increased sales and marketing. You may not be able to go after new sales right away but you can start by retaining clients. This can be done through offering rewards and providing value additions to your client deliverables. When you pursue client retention, you can expect not just repeat business, but also newer clients who come through referrals. Conversely, incentivize referrals, provide discounts, or create loyalty programs for existing clients.

 4. Trim expenses through better negotiations; create newer marketing channels

Apart from bringing in more business to make up for deficits, it is a good idea to reduce costs through practices like negotiating better and trimming expenses on essentials such as a lease on the office premises, furniture, transport, etc. or choosing a vendor who supplies at a lower cost.

Look at alternatives to hiring new talent or recruiting staff. Instead, explore the option of utilizing online tools that could help you carry out the job.

You can also reduce expenses through the use of low-cost channels for all your marketing needs. If you need to reassess your target audience and change your marketing channels accordingly, you may find that this helps you cut down costs very effectively. Social media options can prove to be extremely effective in taking your message to your audience without costing your business a dent in the budget.

5. Reach out for professional help

Even if you feel unable to harness the options discussed, there is help available for you in the form of outsourcing your requirements. Outsourcing allows you to tap into a talent pool that is ready to start working on your needs without investments of time or money. Even after you decide to use online tools, you can still check outsourcing for help on operating and maintenance of the tools.

Outsourcing can also help you with business insights, goal setting and even creation of a budget based on analysis of your business needs, depending on the vendor you hire. This means you literally trim all unnecessary expenses out.

Written by

Analytix Editorial Team