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…

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…

When you are actually implementing the budgeting solution, you also want to make sure the workflow setup is a good fit for your team. For example, you want to give people enough time to complete their parts of the budget, but also enough time to analyze it. A strong budget…

Before implementing a budgeting solution, you need to make sure your users know why they are budgeting. What is the goal? Make sure they know they are not budgeting just for the sake of it. This ties into having a strong strategic vision for the business. Say that you want…