Introduction

Business Figures provides a place to add a sales budget that interacts with the Sales Forecast and Sales and Profit Report. It is not mandatory that you set up a Sales Budget nor do you need to do it at installation. You can always come back to it at a later date if you want to. The Sales Budget is a good way of keeping track of your sales goals as you check your sales forecast each week.

Setting up your Business Figures

The cost sections are split into Manufacturing Wages, Other and Overhead. This is a traditional method of accounting. You do not have to split these figures if you do not wish to. You could simply enter all costs into Overhead fields.

To arrive at the figures such as manufacturing wages and Overhead collect the data from last years profit and loss and adjust according to any predictions or changes to the current year.

Financial Year

Select the correct Financial year (July to June).

Component Percentage Budget

Work out what you average annual component cost percentage to sales is and add this percentage value here. Then in the Sales Forecast you will see the profit potential based on the sales budget.

Sales Budget

Enter Your Sales Budget. These figures are reflected on the Sales Forecast and Sales and Profit Reports.

Manufacturing Wages.

Traditionally the manufacturing wages are set aside from other overheads as they are a direct production cost and usually vary depending on the amount of sales made. Having manufacturing wages separate means you can set a production wage percentage to sales value and keep your eye out for blow outs.

To work out your manufacturing wages add up the wage costs of all staff that are involved in production. Some staff may be part production and part admin (such as yourself). In this case determine the approximate time spent in production and apportion that amount of the wage to Manufacturing Wages. Don't worry about being too accurate with this division of wage. Close enough is fine.

Overhead

This is all the costs involved in opening running your business other than the manufacturing wages and component cost. Cost such as Office wages, Utilities, Insurance etc. These figures are best obtained from last years profit and loss after consideration of any adjustments that should be made for the current year.

Manufacturing Wages and Overheads should equal the sum total of all your expenses other than component cost. However you may wish to split some costs to a separate record and add them to Other.

Other

You may not wish to put anything in this section but here are some possible expenses that you may like to separate. from the pack.

Leasing expenses for equipment: These values have an ephemeral effect on your business figures as they eventually are paid out. So you might decide to keep these separate from overhead for a variety of reasons.

Bank Loan: Again a cost that will eventually be removed so setting it separately may help you see what the real overhead is when no business loan is involved.

Directors renumeration: You may decide to set a directors fee into the other section of the business figures. This could be set separate to your wages that are incorporated into Office wages (and likely some in manufacturing wages. By paying yourself a wage and setting a budgeted goal for Business Profit renumeration you will be able to focus on this value in reports which may make you work harder and smarter to achieve the kind renumeration you deserve.

Summary

Business figures are designed to keep figures in front of you as you do business on a daily basis. They help you stay focused and see whats happening in your business.

The expense figures (not Sales budget) can be adjusted each month to reflect the result for the month and slowly turn the figures to reality.