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Mein Wochen in review

Shit, what a week.

I have been sick and busy.

It is budget time here in retail manager land, and I am actually enjoying it.

We have the basic spread sheet with sales, GP, purchasing and wages tabs etc...

We all use it.

This year however, I am using it only to present the final information to the people who matter.

Why? Because it is their preferred method of receiving.

My way however, is very different.

Instead of putting in your number by month as a result of a + or - percentage on the previous years results, I am building my budget from the ground up.

Working on three years worth of data to compare with fluctuating PAX arrivals and exchange rates to create what I call a barebones budget.

The barebones budget is what I forecast we can achieve by just opening the doors and doing nothing extraordinary.

Let's say that this number is $10 million.

Sales revenue break even is $4.7 million dollars.

Leaving $5.3 million to pay everyone and cover the costs of operation, including shit like directors fees etc...

I expect the actual pocketed amount to be around $3.8 million.

With my barebones budget, these are roughly what we can expect.

Now the key to increasing this, IMHO, is to analyse sales trends by month. We have a busy period for our industry that spans six months.

For this period I am working on promotions with suppliers and quantifying what numbers we can hit, this data then gets added to my bare bones budget with an assumption.

e.g. October sales $1.2 million dollars (barebones), $1.5 million dollars assuming sales of product 'A' equal $10,000 per day for October.

This now gives me a greater depth of vision for how my business could operate during the next financial season.

Sweet eh.

Once it is all finished, I'll send it to the the big cheese who will no doubt have a good laugh and 10% to every month and then base my KPI's around his numbers.

Lovely.

7 Days

Dear father who art in heaven

Forgive me for I have sinned

It has been seven days since my last confession...

...as the retail manager.