Page 29 - Budgeting for Managers

Budgeting for Managers
12
Partner with Your Customers
Help your customers think about what they need from you.
You might tell them,“Last year, you made 12,000 copies. It
looks like 8,000 of them were for two big mailings.” Then you can add
questions to get them thinking: How many mailings are you doing this
year? Is your mailing list growing? Are you doing anything else that will
require photocopies?
Helping them think through their needs will not only give you a
more accurate budget and make it easier to plan your team’s work-
load, it will also help them appreciate you more. Of course, it’s also
important to respect your customers’ time. If a customer would pre-
fer that you just send a quick e-mail and let her reply, that’s fine, too.
Putting in these figures, we now get a projection for 2003 that
looks like Table 1-2:
Print Shop Expenses 2002 Actual 2003 Estimated
Equipment leases $3,600 $2,400
Toner 900 1,080
Plain paper 300 360
Special papers 60
Equipment purchase 600 950

Service contracts 1,500 1,600
Equipment repair 350
Miscellaneous 150
Sales tax 142
Total expenses $7,602 $6,390
Table 1-2. Print shop expenses (part of 2003)

Step 4: Reviewing the Results
Looking at our estimate (Table 1-2), we see that we’ve got a new
figure for every line item that cost over $500 last year. It’s time to
ask ourselves some questions before we finish up the budget.