Written by Jenny Okonkwo
- Treat it as a ‘Finance only’ chore performed once a year, purely to keep Group / Head office (located elsewhere) happy
- Unilaterally agree how marketing and promotional spend should be treated in the financial statements
- Don’t consult with suppliers and service providers re estimates on major overheads such as utilities – split and allocate quarterly service charges across all months
- Exclude the Fleet department (if it applies) when calculating driver headcount and petrol card charges for the coming year
- Take an arbitrary view on allocating sales volumes and ignore the basis / data criteria upon which Sales bonus / incentive schemes are calculated
- Unilaterally reduce major cost of sales items (e.g. product warranty) with no insight into whether this is feasible or realistic
- Delegate the budget process mechanics and roll out advanced planning ERP based tools to the business with no prior training or orientation
- Stay away from a strategic business expansion planning exercise that requires a re-cut and re-allocation of the original company budget
- Refrain from taking a leadership position in presenting and explaining the financial impact of major projects to senior management
- Ignore major P&L variances to the budget, arising from monthly reporting of the results
- Treat the quarterly business performance review meeting as a social event
- Avoid preparing quarterly forecasts to identify and understand the future impact of the actual results to date.
Amusing and you raise some good points. People just don’t want to get involved in the process … maybe it’s a fear of numbers….?