The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Managing Your Budget

Financial management is crucial to your success. Knowing exactly where your money is coming from and where it’s going will help you make better decisions and grow your business.

At Walmart Business, we know one major key to business success starts with a solid financial plan. That’s why we’ve created a guide to the essential steps to take to create one. You can download it here, and read on for a snapshot of what it covers. 

Why financial planning is important

Financial planning helps business owners evaluate their current resources and make decisions about how best to allocate them.

In addition, the process of creating a financial plan identifies your business’s strengths and reveals new ways of thinking about how to achieve your goals.

By keeping a record of the business’s performance and comparing it to your plan over time, you learn what works and what doesn’t, so you can make better choices for the future.
Finally, having a financial plan conveys confidence when you’re talking to potential partners or lenders.

Essential steps for creating a financial plan

Our guide will walk you through creating your financial plan and introduce you to the following essential concepts.

Setting goals

Setting goals gets you thinking about what you want to achieve over the short- and long-term. The more precise your goals are, the better able you’ll be to set specific metrics and track your progress against them.  

Understanding your cash flow

Cash flow is the relationship between your business’s expenses (money flowing out) and revenue (money flowing in). While it’s natural to focus on profit, examining cash flow gives you a better overall financial picture of how your business is doing. 

Evaluating your profitability

Profitability is a comprehensive analysis of revenue and expenses that tells you not only how much money you’re making but also how efficient your business is overall.

Establishing a budget

Establishing a realistic budget helps you track your spending. It’s also a great way to limit wasteful spending and focus only on what matters.

Tracking your progress

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day details of running your business and lose sight of the big picture. Measuring your progress against the set of key performance indicators (KPIs) from your business plan as well as industry benchmarks is how you’ll know if you should stay the course or adjust your strategy. 

Get the guide

At Walmart Business, we know managing the finances of a small business can be challenging without the right tools and resources. This guide is filled with tips and techniques to get your business started out on the right foot, as well as worksheets to help you create a robust financial plan. Click here to download the guide now.