Budgets Suck

SkyHog

SkyHog

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Everything Offends Me
Is anything more irritating than drawing up budgets?

I think I am learning that budgets might be the most evil thing I've ever had to do in my entire life. Dammit.
 
SkyHog said:
Is anything more irritating than drawing up budgets?

I think I am learning that budgets might be the most evil thing I've ever had to do in my entire life. Dammit.
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I have 4 budgets that I have responsibility over. It seems like all I do is have budget meetings. SIGH!
 
SkyHog said:
Is anything more irritating than drawing up budgets?

I think I am learning that budgets might be the most evil thing I've ever had to do in my entire life. Dammit.
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Budgets are a pain, forecasts (we do 5-yr. projections) are much worse!

Gary
 
I aggree...budgets suck...but it's MUCH more of a pain to try to run the business without any idea of how much money your departments are going to ask for.
 
Budgets force you to focus your thinking, prioritize your tasks, and allocate resources in the most effective manner, and to do so in an organized manner explainable to others. Yeah, that's hard work, but that's why managers get paid more.
 
Ron Levy said:
Budgets force you to focus your thinking, prioritize your tasks, and allocate resources in the most effective manner, and to do so in an organized manner explainable to others. Yeah, that's hard work, but that's why managers get paid more.
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This is indeed why managers get paid more: to do that job; indeed, that's pretty much the definition of management in a business context. How many of them succeed at it is another question entirely.
 
Ron Levy said:
Budgets force you to focus your thinking, prioritize your tasks, and allocate resources in the most effective manner, and to do so in an organized manner explainable to others. Yeah, that's hard work, but that's why managers get paid more.
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LOL, you mean I am supposed to make my manager do this for me? Something tells me he'd be pretty disappointed if I just said no. lol
 
Running a sales tax based company really sucks. Trying to project income off what people are spending is a tough job. So far this year I am $10K off (low) from my projection. I based our budget off our income from 2006 revenues, last month my income was equal to 1999"s.:mad:
 
I'm actually a little sick. I like budgeting and financial forecasting. :D
 
Ken Ibold said:
Living on one.
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:thumbsup:

Though it was much easier when I could simply moan in ignorance about how we didn't have enough money to do the work, and blame managers. Now I simply moan about it in complete knowledge of why, and get paid more so that people can blame me.
 
I hear ya Nick. I do a 7 figure budget for our department and live it daily.

Debbie and I also do a monthly budget for our household and definitely live it daily.

In a past job I was responsible for completing seasonalized forecasts for about 15 separate companies.

Did I mention I love working on this stuff? Weird, yeah, I know.

Hang in there, it does get easier the more often you do this type of thing.
 
kevin47881 said:
I hear ya Nick. I do a 7 figure budget for our department and live it daily.

Debbie and I also do a monthly budget for our household and definitely live it daily.

In a past job I was responsible for completing seasonalized forecasts for about 15 separate companies.

Did I mention I love working on this stuff? Weird, yeah, I know.

Hang in there, it does get easier the more often you do this type of thing.
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WOOHOO!! I'm taking an entire class this semester on "Forecasting & Demand Management". Lots of alpha's, beta's and gamma's going on in there. ;) It's kinda fun to throw something at Excel that makes it actually have to think for a while, though. :)
 
CJones said:
WOOHOO!! I'm taking an entire class this semester on "Forecasting & Demand Management". Lots of alpha's, beta's and gamma's going on in there. ;) It's kinda fun to throw something at Excel that makes it actually have to think for a while, though. :)
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No doubt. As I type, there is a 45,340 row Excel file on the other screen. It isn't always happy but it always gets me where I need to be. ;)
 
kevin47881 said:
No doubt. As I type, there is a 45,340 row Excel file on the other screen. It isn't always happy but it always gets me where I need to be. ;)
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Excel and Solver-fu must be strong to do that work. ;)

My problem as I sit in those classes is I always start thinking about how I could design a complete information system that would compile the numbers automatically into a database, so all the end user has to do is press 'go' and get a nice graphical display of previous data with the forecast overlay. Then I end up in a world of RFID's, inventory management, and all sorts of goodies.
 
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Anthony said:
I'm actually a little sick. I like budgeting and financial forecasting. :D
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As do I. My wife claims this comes from the fact that I like offal meats; I guess "you are what you eat".

Cheers,

-Andrew
already working on his first reforecast for the year
 
Well I hate budgets too, but I have been living to one for about four months and my debt has decreased, my health has improved (not eating out and I go to the gym instead of the movies), and I see the financial light at the end of 3 year tunnel, oh and I dont have any fun or buy any tools even when they are on sale, so yeah my life sucks right now.
 
akite said:
oh and I dont have any fun or buy any tools even when they are on sale, so yeah my life sucks right now.
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My definition of Hell is having to use the tools you want to buy, unless it was to build an airplane of course. To each their own. Good on ya sir. :D
 
smigaldi said:
Your right I blocked out LRPs. Talk about crystal ball stuff.
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Why do public companies, most of which manage by the quarter, even bother with budgets for longer periods?
 
After spending 30-odd years in my real career (all finance-related stuff such as accounting, management services, consulting, investment banking, etc.) that allowed me to spend the last 15 years screwing around with airplane deals, I am still amazed how many business owners operate sans budgets.

It's even more interesting to see their lights come on after they understand the benefits to them and the measuring sticks they provide. And many of them are Intuit users that have had the budgeting tools on their Quicken or Quickbooks software for a number of years. They just didn't ever think about using it? Hellooooo?


Ron Levy said:
Budgets force you to focus your thinking, prioritize your tasks, and allocate resources in the most effective manner, and to do so in an organized manner explainable to others. Yeah, that's hard work, but that's why managers get paid more.
Click to expand...
 
I actually love crunching the numbers to get real data. Over a 3-year period, the 182 burns 12.97 gallons per tach hour, etc...

The part that I hate is the data entry to get to the point where the computer can spit out useful data. :vomit:
 
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