Every business owner understands that to see their company grow and thrive, they must manage every aspect of it, and hindsight is 20/20. The same is true when planning your budget. In my experience as a founder and CEO, most business owners analyze the past year’s spending to plan ahead for the new year. They can examine and assess the past year’s sales and inventory statistics, supply chain challenges and marketing campaigns.
Owners can also look at which inventory items sold the best, which stock supplies ran short, which issues came up in the store that required spending money to fix, and whether there were expenses that might need to be considered recurring for the upcoming year. If you pushed off upgrades or renovation projects from the prior year, you might need to include these in the following year’s budget as well.
Here are my tips on preparing for and navigating some of these costs as you plan your budget.
Staying Ahead Of Supply Chain Issues
After decades of business owners being able to rely on vendors to ship merchandise to them when ordered, the pandemic hit, which caused labor shortages, limited supplies and shipping delays. These factors all contributed to supply chain issues. In light of fluctuations in the supply chain index due to world events, business owners need to keep in mind that ordering merchandise and delivery dates might be unpredictable. Track the prices of key products, weather conditions and economic factors to ensure you’re prepared and can budget for these changes.
