A recent article from AllBusiness.com offers “8 Budgeting Tips for Your Business,” to help you manage your bottom line and recognize areas for improvement. Too many owners and CEOs feel that budgeting is a waste of time and things will work out if they just do enough business, but following these tips will help you meet profit targets and avoid costly surprises.

1. Take the time to do it right. Just like any other project, budgeting will take some time and thought. Get input from your team and make it worth the effort by doing it right.
2. Practice, practice, practice. It can be difficult to estimate the future, but you will become more accurate over time if you actively use a budget.
3. Don’t think your company is the exception. Any business can and should be budgeted. The key is to strike the appropriate balance between the time invested in your budget and forecasting accurately.
4. Use a Gantt chart. This is an expanded timeline that tracks deliverable dates.
5. Don’t try to budget to the last penny. Getting too detailed will drive you crazy. The real, reasonable objective is to be able to make corrections at a level that makes a significant difference.
6. Make tradeoffs when necessary. If you have unexpected expenses, decide what budgeted item can be eliminated in order to compensate.
7. Set both profit and cash flow targets. Both metrics need to be monitored and understood. “Keep in mind that every year businesses with great profits fail due to a lack of cash,” the author writes.
8. Ask three questions to assess your results. Ask these questions at the end of every month: (1) How are we doing compared to the budget? If the results are different from the plan, why did this happen? (2) What must we do now to have a better result next month? How can we keep the positive differences and avoid the negative ones? (3) What are we learning that will help make next year’s budget better?

Click here to read the entire article from AllBusiness.com.