Five Ways to Streamline Your Budgeting Process

A recent webcast on multifamily budgeting shed a spotlight on some great opportunities to fine-tune the process in order to save time, improve accuracy and keep budgets on track. Participants emphasized that the time to look at your budget creation and approval processes is not when budgeting season is already upon you. Read over the suggestions below, then schedule a time when you can pull all stakeholders together to brainstorm about how to make your budgeting process run more smoothly. Include the property manager. Many PMCs do budgeting at the regional level, then push the budgets out to the property managers. But including your property managers can deliver some big benefits. When property managers are included in the planning, they feel more invested. A budget that’s dropped upon them simply doesn’t feel the same as one they’ve participated in creating. Property managers have a heightened sense of responsibility about keeping to a budget they’ve had a hand in. And when the budget is tight, they’re less likely to feel frustrated or resentful because unreasonable numbers have been foisted upon them. Make sure employees who are supplying the budget data are the ones actually entering the data into the system. Don’t use the common approach of having employees supply spreadsheets that then require another person to enter the numbers. Instead, supply them with an import template that enables them to enter the data directly. This will increase both the speed and accuracy of your process. RealPage Budgeting, for example, features such a template. Audit your budget creation process. Rather than simply live with the way it currently is, gather feedback on the process from those involved with creating the budgets. This makes them feel included while providing an opportunity for people to point out areas where fine-tuning may be appropriate. Here are some questions to ask as part of this audit: How long did income take to...