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SophieZo Virtually There For You

Budget Blues? Beat 'em With This Easy Guide

July 11, 2014 by sophiezo Leave a Comment

Summer is the time of year when many small business revenues can slow down, but expenses don’t change. Does your budget have the flexibility and cash flow planning to cover your expenses during the slow months?

Here’s a quick & dirty planner for basic budgeting to help you figure out when you need money and how to save for it.

Start by listing your expenses for all 12 months of the year. Use last year’s numbers as a guide, and adjust for any increases. For example, if you use the mail, the price of stamps increased last year, so even if you send the same number of pieces of mail, your postage expense will go up. Some line item expenses may include:

  • Contractor pay
  • Rent/mortgage
  • Insurance
  • Advertising/marketing/public relations
  • Participation in trade shows, conventions, etc.
  • Travel
  • Utilities
  • Office supplies & equipment
  • Inventory
  • Professional services such as cleaning, security guard, taxes, etc.

Next, make a list of monthly income. This can include:

  • Sales
  • Earned interest
  • Capital gains
  • Royalties

Add these up to determine the monthly income and expenses your business can expect on a monthly and annual basis. You may decide to also examine your budget quarterly, if that is helpful to you.

The last piece of this is to keep close track of each and every expense or incoming penny each month. Then compare the actual figures to your budget to ensure you’re not spending too much in any particular month, and to see where you need to save revenue to cover expenses during low-revenue months.

The key to ensuring that you can always meet your expenses is to remember, whenever your revenue is greater than your expenses, save that extra money. Many people will impulsively use any extra to expand, or to invest in marketing or to upgrade equipment. But unless those expenses are built into your budget, you’ll find that you will be short on cash during the slow months.

If budget planning and expense reconciliation is not for you, get it off your plate! It’s crucial to the success of your business, so get someone else to create a budget and keep track of everything. A bookkeeper can help you set up your business budget (or even a personal budget!) and can track and file your receipts and invoices every month so you are always on top of cash flow. You’ll never find yourself short again!

If you feel overwhelmed or stressed out when working through all of this, a virtual assistant can help. Want to get your budgeting all set for the rest of the year and into 2015? Contact a virtual assistant today and get your budget done!

Filed Under: Bookkeeping, Delegating, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Money Savers, Online Business Managment, Outsourcing, Personal, production, Time Management, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Services, Work At Home

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We’ve been working with Sophie Zollmann for almost half a year now, building an online lifelong learning platform and community from the ground up (because in-person classes became impossible in light of the corona virus). Sophie has guided every technical aspect of this enterprise including the construction of landing-pages and websites, the management of mailing lists and revenue funnels, setting up Zoom meetings, etc., allowing us to focus exclusively on content production and marketing. This platform is now off the ground and succeeding beyond our wildest hopes.

We couldn’t have built it without Sophie’s support, which has always been prompt and timely, and her guidance, as she’s always pointed us to the most efficient and economical solutions to whatever technical issue we’ve faced. In the heat of the moment, I’m sure we’ve not always been easy to work with, but Sophie has also been generous and understanding to a fault. In sum, her support has been flawless and absolutely essential to the success of our online enterprise. We will be relying on her services again as we ramp up for our next phase of growth.

David Peritz
Founding Director
Minerva Academy of Lifelong Learning


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