Definitive Business Plan, Second Edition, The

Financial objectives

There is one more set of objectives that you need to take into account. Budgets – which is another name for financial objectives. They are yardsticks against which you can measure actual performance. People tend to get rather hung up about budgets. They are actually straightforward. Keep an open mind as you read the next few paragraphs.

You do not have any more work to do at the outset. In the financial section (Chapters 7 –10) we agreed that you would use your central – most likely – forecast as an operating budget for the first year of your plan.

As you progress through the year, your accounting people will prepare monthly statements of actual revenue and spending. You might sit behind the accounting desk from time-to-time ...