Did you know that cash flow problems are the main reason most companies go out of business?

If you are seriously interested in making your business a success, then managing your money effectively is critical to the security of your organisation.

When starting a new business it might seem impossible to put together a budget without any financial history on which to base income and expenses. However a business plan, before you even start, with some idea of costs and revenues is essential to determining the viability of a business, even if you are just planning to setup a work at home business. It might seem like guesswork at the beginning, but a tentative budget can be established with some thought and projections of future business. From some past experience in renovating properties, I always say ‘think of a figure and double it’ and then you will be near the mark. I think this is true for other businesses, because it’s human nature to underestimate what we need to spend and over estimate what we will earn.

Businesses usually have two main categories, like my website development business, income and expense. Under the expense category there can be several sub-categories often falling into two main areas of controllable expenses and uncontrollable. While many business owners claim they can control every expense involved in their business, they are simply kidding themselves, as some things such as utility cost, the amount of rent and other so-called fixed costs can, and do change, with the owner having no control. (Recent oil price increases are responsible for a number of small airline companies going out of business)

Other expenses such as payroll, insurance and advertising can be subject to a budget, but they are considered controllable expenses. If the business begins to fall off, you can control some of these expenses by laying-off employees and cutting back on advertising. However, living by a budget may help maintain profitability but could also turn against you in the long run.

Depending on the viability of your business it may be a better investment to bite the financial bullet on employee wages and still provide good customer service to the remaining customers until business picks up again. If no one takes care of the customers, it will not be long until there are no more customers to care for.

There are two ways to budget your business money and these are through set dollar amounts and percentage of income. Many businesses will budget their controllable expenses by the dollar and non-controllable by percentage of income. Obviously a good part of the owner’s time is going to be based on bringing money into the business and how much they have to spend on controllable expenses will be in direct relation to income. With any increase in business the owner will probably need the extra help to take care of the business so a percentage of income will go to more wages, thus freeing the owner to focus on generating additional income.

There are many other expenses that fall into the payroll account such as worker’s compensation charges, Social Security tax paid by the employer and paid vacation time or other perks determined by the employer. These needed to be calculated into costs when recruiting people into the business.

While you may think a budget is difficult to establish for a new business, it is essential to establish a healthy and sound financial foundation on which success can be built for the future.

About the Author: Roger Davies, The Managing Director of Advanta website development, has overseen the team that has created and published hundreds of websites. Don’t know how to build a website? No Problem! Don’t know how to advertise online? No Problem! Roger and his team will build your site and promote it for you! Visit www.advantapro.com for details.