Rink

May/June 2017

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USICERINKS.COM MAY.JUNE.2017 / 21 • Health insurance • Insurance (to make budget meetings even more fun have different line items for different types of insurance) • Office supplies • Utilities • Chemicals • Tools and equipment • Contracted services • Snow removal • Payroll services • Education and conferences (NARCE) Here, again, anything that you need to operate your facility should have a line item to code the expense to, with some being more catchalls (like supplies) and others being more specific (such as printing). Should the budget cover the whole year? While program/project budgets will generally be for shorter segments of the year, the operations budget is generally one year, although some jurisdictions are moving to two-year or biennial budgets (anything to avoid budget meetings, right?). The dates covered by the budget are usually determined by outside factors. If you are a part of a school, state, or municipality, then you will likely be told what your fiscal year is. The fiscal year that is most prevalent in municipal settings is a calendar year budget, even though it generally overlaps two separate skating seasons. Private rinks will have their own budget calendar. When should I start budgeting? While the budget is a tool that I use every day of the year, our budget process usually starts six or seven months after the end of the current fiscal year. We begin by looking for indications of what the cost of our inputs are: • What items are out of our control that can affect the budget? • Is there a union contract that can affect the cost of labor? • What is the cost for health insurance from our supplier? • What is the cost of refrigerant unfunded mandates or new licensing fees? To help us forecast, we use the consumer price index for our region to help determine an inflation rate to the appropriate line items. We take a look back at where we've been and at which line items are skewed more, usually due to a one-time expenditure or mechanical failure that was more costly to repair. Make sure to ask yourself if there was a revenue spike due to outside factors as well (i.e. an Olympic year, rental revenue that spiked due to the prolonged closure of a neighboring facility) or conversely, is there a new rink in the area that could negatively affect revenues? These are all factors to be considered when creating an annual budget. Look to your public utilities commission to get a grasp on what your utility cost will be. Very few facilities will be starting from scratch on a budget. Often times in government you will be given budgetary parameters to stay within a certain percentage of last year's budget, it is up to you to figure out how to accomplish that. Don't panic! (And skip the nap!) The longer I am in this industry, the more I find that budgeting is more of an art than a perfect science. A budget can be thrown apart by many factors that are out of your control. What you can control is how you work to stay within budget and avoid wasteful spending while ideally maximizing revenues. Being prepared can go a long way toward making any budget meeting tolerable. The preparation starts with being familiar with your budget document, expectations on timeline and the method of coding revenues and expenses. J The longer I am in this industry, the more I find that budgeting is more of an art than a perfect science.

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