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,…

Tell us if this sounds familiar: you set a goal of finalizing your budget within eight weeks. But seven of those eight weeks are spent collecting data and inputting numbers into a spreadsheet, tracking changes from other staff, merging documents, catching small errors, and generally giving you one large, administrative headache.​ By…

What makes a meaningful budget? Aligned with short-term and long-term goals. Takes into account past trends. Accounts for more than what you plan to spend. Driven by strategy. Provides clear vision to your team. An effective budget is not just numbers on a sheet. You want your budget to balance…

The best budget is not going to succeed unless your employees do their part. You need to have staff onboard, not just for the budget itself, but also for the new budgeting solution. This goes back to knowing your why –when you have a strong reason for making a strategic…

Just because your budget is complex does not mean that your budgeting process has to be. As you ramp up your forecasting, you need a tool that adapts with you. Spreadsheets and email just do not provide the flexibility you need and are often very administratively heavy to update regularly….