Admin pays for all printing that is NOT for a specific division (except letterhead).
ex. ALL letterhead, envelopes, time tickets, business cards without employee names, etc.
Mass mailings are planned for February and October. (5, 3)
Admin plans to hire new staff member in February. (8)
Should have enough Dubuque letterhead to last through 1994. (6)
a + b = $270
c - $20
d - $490
e - $70
f - $330
g - $55 - business & note cards
h - $87
Steve Wilson's guided tour of the employee-run-budget sheet:
One of the staff's biggest concerns was its ability to make predictions. I was afraid that might cause people to pad their budgets. But they agreed to budget as accurately as they could without padding, and so we added an item called "miscellaneous unplanned" to the income statement. The first year, they got a 5% "slush fund" allowance on the total dollars they budgeted. They used 1.2%. Last year they got 2%, and they used less than 1%.
The form is kept really simple, so it's less threatening to use. We list enough information that each division manager knows whom to ask about discrepancies.
By listing the items, it's easier to identify when they should be purchased. It's better than budgeting a lump sum each month to be spent on whatever comes up first, because you might discover later that you blew the whole budget on one item.
Senior designer Brian Farnum:
"Morale has really increased around here. The biggest thing is the bonus program. It keeps employees trying to learn how to budget a lot better."
Occasionally, you need to purchase something before or after it was budgeted. If so, a notation should be made to help with next year's budget. If stationery was budgeted for a big printing order in February, say, and we used it all up doing mailings during Christmas, employees would have to buy more. If that occurs two years in a row, they would know that they'd have to either stock up on stationery in November or always budget for the fact that after the holidays we'll be short on a lot of things.
Here [ Notes] you might find the past price of an item or the expected price increase for the next year. Each note should be numbered to reference the budget item it corresponds to. This kind of information is often shared at our monthly meetings. Once, an employee had read in the newspaper that the utilities had filed for a rate increase. So the person who's in charge of budgeting utilities wrote it on the work sheet and budgeted for the expected change.
Budgeters [ footnotes] make note of anything that may be different from what they originally budgeted, such as price increases or items that should have been budgeted for but were not. So when the employees are sitting in a review meeting and somebody asks why they overspent their budgets in July, they'll have their notes there to update everyone.
Steve Wilson explains his rationale for having employees do the budgets:
"I shouldn't have to make decisions about whom we're going to buy paper clips from or about whether we get 1,000 sheets of stationery printed or 10,000 sheets printed. Many people push those decisions up the chain because they're afraid to pick wrong. The reason they're afraid is that nobody taught them how to make a good decision."
The monthly totals are entered into our financial budget for the year. Clamping down on the monthly spending is not something employees take lightly. They see how dollars saved go directly to the bottom line, and they get 35% of everything they save. When they budgeted last year, they predicted that they would receive five bonus payments during all of 1994. We ended up paying out nine. Those bonuses equaled an average of 25% of employees' total income.
The "Tot" column allows us to see how much has been budgeted for each item. Employees reconcile the budget on a monthly basis, and that information is fed into the income statement, which compares the actual dollars spent with the dollars budgeted. The managers review it monthly and post it on the bulletin board, so employees can see their line item showing how much they said they would spend, the profit generated, and the bonus earned.
Administrative associate Sandy Moeller talks about the joy of budgeting:
"Every day's really a challenge. I've picked up lots of additional responsibilities. I feel as though I'm needed, and I take real pride in that."
