Small Business Budgeting

A budget is an estimate of your expenses and income. A business budget helps you plan your operations, track your spending, grow your business and achieve your goals. A budget is a plan that helps you stay on track and when unforeseen expenses do hit you, your budget helps you manage these surprises better and stay on top.

You can create a budget that spans the entire year or 6 months or a quarter. However, monthly budgets are more effective because the short period lets you correct your mistakes quickly and be better prepared for the next month. For budgets to work, you'll need to first create one, compare your budgeted numbers with the actual ones, revise your budget and create a more accurate budget for the next month.

How can expenseRegister help you with Business Budgeting?

With expenseRegister, you can -

1. Setup a business budget quickly
2. Compare your budgeted and actual expenses and make sure you are on track
3. Revise your budget easily to fine tune your budget

Small Business Budgeting is a premium feature.

Below are steps to create a Small Business Budget -

Step 1

Login to expenseRegister. Click on Budget on the left side.

Step 2

Click the + (New) button and click the Small Business Budget link to create a new small business budget.

Step 3

In the Create a New Budget form, type in a name and description for your budget. Check the Primary Budget box so spending categories in this budget get listed as types that you can easily pick from when entering an expense.

Step 4

Next, key in an Income amount. Use income numbers from previous months to estimate your income. If this is your first month in business, just make a rough estimate. Once you have more information, you can edit this budget with the more accurate income amount.

Step 5

Key in values into the standard spending categories listed. Some of these like Rent, Phone, Internet are easier because these are typically a fixed amount. So key in these amounts first. Notice how the value in Total Budgeted Expenses is automatically calculated for you.

For expenses that vary like electricity, enter an estimate.

This is a good time to allocate amounts for expenses like Advertising. These vary, but having a budgeted amount helps us plan for the expense.

Step 6

You can create categories that are not included in the standard budget by clicking the green plus sign and add a custom category.

Step 7

Click Save. 'My Biz Budget' is now saved as your primary budget.

Track Spending and Monitor your Budget

Now that you have your primary budget set up, the categories here will show up as expense types when you record your expenses. This will help you categorize your expenses easily, track your spending and stay on top of your budget.

As the month progresses, to check if you are on track, go to the Budgets page and click on your budget. This will open your budget, look up your expenses and display actual expenses along with your budgeted ones.

The above view shows that you are well within your spending limits. For example, you had budgeted $600 for rent and you spent that exact amount. When you go over your budget on a certain category, this view will show clearly that you are going over budget like you see for electricity above.

You can also click on the actual amounts in each categories to list the actual expenses.

Editing and Fine Tuning your Budget

As you monitor your expenses and compare them with your budget, you might notice that you are bit off on some categories or that you need a couple more custom categories. You can make these changes to this budget.

To edit your budget, go to the budgets page and click on the edit link to make changes to your budget.

Editing your budget is just like creating a new one — you key in your amounts, add more categories if necessary and click Save.

It might take you a few revisions over a couple months to come up with a budget that is accurate. expenseRegister helps you get started quickly with a simple budget and lets you easily revise and customize your budget.