Financial planning is hard. Fullbay’s Jacob Findlay and Robby Gilbert admit that up front. Fullbay’s annual state of the repair industry survey last year indicated more than half of service shops don’t develop annual business plans, and the duo understands why. It’s not easy to build a financial plan from scratch, especially when you’re also running with your hair on fire every day trying to run a small business.
During a session at Wednesday’s Fullbay Diesel Connect conference in Phoenix, the duo told a packed house of shop executives that while building a financial plan might feel like an uphill battle, it’s one worth taking on. Financial planning enables businesses to improve efficiency, better manage expenses, achieve goals and increase profits.
“When you’re building a budget, you should be thinking about ‘What is possible for me?’” says Gilbert, Fullbay vice president of finance. “With incremental improvements, we can exceed what we thought possible.”
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For businesses without a financial plan, the duo says its best to start from scratch. Put together a budget based on your most recent financial information to understand how healthy your operation really is. Gilbert says a budget can be “as granular or high level as you’d like.” Gilbert recommends simplicity for first timers, but says what matters isn’t the number of rows on the spreadsheet, but the accuracy of the numbers within.
“I think the more simple [a budget] is, the more likely you are to use it,” he says.
“Whether a financial plan is super complicated or super simple, you usually come up with the same conclusions,” adds Findlay, Fullbay co-founder and executive chairman.
