Show me the money part 2!

OK, we have had the fun of trying to forecast all the money we will bring in for 2011 and now we have to get down to the brass tacks of where that money has to be spent to put on the program. This usually involves some serious juggling with what we want to do against the projected funds to do it. At TNT we always start with the necessary football expenditures to run football operations which include players equipment, referee costs, EMS costs, field rental, training equipment etc. These costs are critical to insure that the “football” side of the organization is top quality. Included in these items might also be coaching aids or clinics needed to upgrade our coaches and assist them during practices. Our players enjoy all the luxury stuff that we provide such as team and individual pictures, club t-shirt, sports bag, Argo ticket and banquet but the primary reason they come to us is to learn the game of football and that must always have priority. At TNT we have roughly 30 expense items and what I do is print out our last years financial statement in the form of a spread sheet. This gives me a great working document to project expenses and compare them with last years at the same time. I am a big fan of our Quick Books software which is user friendly and easily provides detailed reports in a wide range of fields. Now that we have projected both revenue and expenses we compare to see how those two figures stack up. Since TNT is not the government we can’t run at a deficit so we have to insure that our revenue will fully fund our entire program. If we look like there is going to be some excess money available the discussion will revolve around what is the best way to put it to good use. That might be more and better equipment, coaching videos or any of a number of initiatives that we will discuss as an executive. 3 years ago we had a large surge in attendance and a very successful season with concessions and we were able to parlay that into an electronic scoreboard for our field.
Now that we have a working budget and each department knows what they have available to spend, executive members will get started on individual projects that they are responsible for and will report back to the board at the next meeting with confirmation that the projected budget will indeed work or if changes have to be made. I estimate that with the AGM, the budget and planning meetings we will have invested 34 hours and we have not signed one player yet. Next time you will get a look at how we advertise and recruit players at the various levels.