How Well Do You Know Your Company’s Budget?

Done right, budgets provide strategic insights and operational focus, but most are static, cumbersome, and out-of-date.

Managing budget and spend is time-consuming and complicated. We recently surveyed nearly 250 US-based business owners, CFOs, and managers to build a deeper understanding of how companies of all sizes manage this critical business function.

Not surprisingly, most respondents’ companies set budgets on an annual basis (55%), despite best practices that recommend rolling budgets. Just 14% of respondents said their companies adjust budgets periodically through the year.

We also found that nearly half of companies (43%) continue to use manual processes and antiquated tools like spreadsheets, and that a quarter (25%) had “no idea” how much of their budget went to discretionary spend (travel and entertainment, office supplies, software subscriptions, and other controllable expenses).

Our conclusion is that new tools are needed to make it easier to answer the question “How are you tracking to budget?” It’s more important than ever to connect budget to spend so companies can make strategic decisions about where to invest resources.

Here is a visual summary of what we learned.