At True Sky, we talk a lot about budgeting. It makes sense, right? That’s the whole point of True Sky: to make budgeting easier, more streamlined, and more useful for companies of all types.

And while we have been heard to sing the praises of the strategic budgeting system, there’s one thing we want to make clear: the budget is not your robot overlord. In other words, it’s not in charge of you—you are in charge of it.

Sure, that seems like a no-brainer. After all, a business budget doesn’t just appear out of thin air. People create it, and they put a lot of effort into doing so. However, once a budget is set, there’s a noticeable tendency for the CFO, accounting department, or whoever else holds the digital keys to that all-important spreadsheet to turn into a bit of a tyrant.

The budget can become the end-all be-all for the organization, with every tiny detail scrutinized and noted. Why is the phone bill seven dollars higher than planned this month? Why did the social committee spend an extra twenty dollars on a fancy cake, when a regular old cake would have done? Why is revenue 3 percent lower than we forecast?

This, as you can imagine, does not create an enjoyable or healthy working environment. Here are a few reasons why you need to remember that your budget does not control you—or the people who work for you.

No one likes to be interrogated.

When’s the last time you felt like being on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned interrogation? Yeah, same for us: Never. Budgets are there to provide guidance, and they should be adhered to if possible. But things change—costs rise, employees need to take sick days, sales falter slightly for no good reason. No employee should feel like coming in a little over budget is cause for a good cop/bad cop scenario. In a worst-case scenario, this could even encourage fraud among your employees, who feel pressured to come in under budget no matter what.

Now, if someone is habitually recording huge overages in their department, that’s worth investigating. But that’s not something that happens terribly often. If your budget is a little off, take a look at why and make adjustments as needed. That’s one reason we built True Sky to be flexible—so that the ups and downs of a company, which are normal and to be expected, could be accounted for without the entire budget having to be redone.

An inflexible budget is just asking to be broken.

You know how they build skyscrapers and bridges to have a little give in them, so that they don’t snap when it’s windy? The same principles and rules should apply to your budget.

Flexibility is a vital component of strength. The fact of the matter is, income and outflow ebb and flow in business, and no matter how well-considered your forecast, sometimes you’re just going to be wrong. And it could be through no fault of your own. Build in some flexibility to your budget, and you’ll be assured that no matter what happens, it’ll bend—but it won’t break.

A tyrannical budget delays your response to change.

The traditional budget, created and guarded closely by a single department, doesn’t contribute to your company’s agility. Companies nowadays need to be transparent and open.

Key to any business’s success is the ability to share information with their employees quickly and on an on-demand basis. Having to dig through static spreadsheets to find one particular number, or creating an entirely new spreadsheet in order to visualize a new scenario, doesn’t facilitate this. Instead, companies that want to compete in the 21st century business environment need to be able to pull reports quickly and easily, change variables as needed, and track the budgeting process across all users and departments. True Sky allows for all of this.

The budget is an important tool, but it shouldn’t rule you and your employees. If you’re ready for more flexibility in your budgeting with the ease of use you need, then contact True Sky today!