We hear this year after year -- people dread this season! No, not Fall -- with its cool, brisk mornings, and beautiful fall colors, it's one of the most picturesque seasons of the year. But coming back from summer vacation, and being hurdled straight into budgeting season -- it's a tough time for many who have to deal with this critical task year after year, but don't have the proper tools in place to help them.
Sure it's relatively easy to take last year's expenses and make a few assumptions and come up with an expense budget. But what about the revenue? Wouldn't it be nice to have all your leasing data automatically accounted for so you don't have to re-enter this information? We're talking lease terms, rent steps, recoveries/escalations clauses -- everything you'll need!
Now, what about being able to make those critical leasing assumptions? Decisions on renewals and those vacant spaces that are so critical to the accuracy of your budget -- that retail tenant whose lease is expiring next year, that 300,000 sqft lease that's about to sign, those newly renovated garden apartments -- how will these affect your budget? Now how about the economy? Sure things are picking up, but what if they don't? Maybe you should have an optimistic budget, and a more conservative one? Maybe reforecast thoughout the year? Sounds like this could all be valuable information to make informed decisions in your business, right? But it's a lot of spreadsheets, with a lot of error prone steps to put together, and most of all it's time-consuming!
If you're spending more time in the administration surrounding your budget, than analyzing scenarios and putting together valuable insights for senior management, then there's a lot of room for improvement. Modern real-estate budgeting applications, like those available in systems you may already have, like Yardi and MRI, can help significantly! We have helped numerous clients move off of spreadsheets and into an integrated budgeting solution that can reduce the administrative burden, reduce the time it takes to generate your budgets and help make budgeting season more fruitful.
If you are already using a budgeting application, but perhaps not using all of it's functionality, not aware of the latest and greatest features, having trouble and still want to improve your budgeting process -- we can help with that too!
Get serious about improving your budgeting process. Now is the perfect time to get started.
