Pop quiz: who should be in charge of your team’s budget? Is it the finance department? The CEO? Operations? Sales? Short Answer: Everybody should be. Having one department or person administer the budget is fine, but when it comes to the planning process, your whole team is ultimately responsible for…

Good communication is paramount to collaborating on workbooks. If you want something done a certain way, you need to give your users careful instructions.​ Essentially, think about the spreadsheet from the perspective of your least technical user, and create it for them.​ Some best practices:​  Put instructions on the page. Even…

When you are designing a template or entry form, you want it to be easy to use. And that starts with the initial impression. In general: Do not show 1,000 columns or 1,000 rows in a spreadsheet. Hide fields and use filters to simplify the workbook. In the right templates,…

All too often, it is easy to fall into the trap of using a budget to maintain the status quo. The sales department spends X dollars on employee expenses, so we will put that in. The telephone system costs X amount, so that goes in. After we tally up the…

First and foremost, you must understand your requirements and resources –which includes your current IT infrastructure, available budget, and human resources. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your existing processes. Consider: What workflow problems do you encounter? What pain points do you wish could be addressed? What elements in your…

If you want to start including more frequent forecasting in your business, then you need to know the best ways to go about it. No one wants to spend more time and money than they need to when the end goal is to save time and money. Start with the…