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Business Roadmaps

You can’t know if your business is on track if you don’t have a proper business budget to measure against.

Business Roadmaps

It’s easy to run a professional services firm without an annual business budget in place. You know roughly what fees need to come in, and when you’re busy looking after clients, that can feel like enough.

But rough numbers only take you so far.

At Benson Wood, we call your annual business budget a Business Roadmap. It’s set out month by month, so you have something to measure against instead of relying on how things feel.

Without that in place, you only find out how the year went when it’s already over.

Find out more about Stay On Track

Why professional services firms need a proper business budget

The tax bills arrive when the money’s already been spent somewhere else. You take someone on when you think you can afford it, and it’s only a few months later that the timing starts to look wrong. A couple of slow months catch you off guard because there was nothing in place to show you they were coming.

And because there’s no budget to measure against, none of it gets picked up until it’s already a problem.

Year-end accounts don’t help with any of this. By the time they arrive, that year is done and there’s nothing you can do about what they tell you. If fees were running behind from month three, you’re finding that out in month sixteen.

A Business Roadmap means you see the warning signs early enough to act on them.

What does a Business Roadmap include?

We build your Business Roadmap with you at the start of the year, working from your fee income by service line or client type, your cost base, and what you want the business to achieve over the year ahead.

Each month gets its own income target and expenditure projection, so when we sit down to look at your Growth Reports throughout the year, you have something specific to compare them against.

Rather than asking whether you had a good month, you can ask if you had the month you planned for, and if not, where the gap is and what to do about it.

  • Annual income and expenditure plan, set out month by month
  • Sales and fee income targets for each month of the year
  • Projected costs and expenditure across the year
  • Monthly tax estimate built into the figures
  • Guidance on setting up a separate tax holding account
  • Comparison against your Growth Report figures, quarterly or monthly, depending on your business needs
  • Included in our Stay On Track and Grow With Confidence packages

How a Business Roadmap works alongside your Growth Reports

A Business Roadmap is the starting point. It gives you a plan to measure against as the year goes on.

Your Growth Reports show how the business is performing against that plan. We look at fee income, margins and the cash position against what the roadmap projected, so you can see where things stand.

Without the roadmap, a Growth Report tells you what happened. With it, you can see whether what happened is what you expected, and where you need to act. The roadmap is what gives the figures their context.

If a particular service line is underperforming, you see it in month four rather than month fourteen. If spending in a particular area is running ahead of plan, it shows up against the budget before it becomes a pattern.

For Stay On Track and Grow With Confidence clients, the roadmap is built at the start of the year. Where the business changes during the year, it can be reviewed so the targets you’re measuring against still reflect where things stand now.

That means the roadmap stays a working document, not something that gets filed away and forgotten.

What changes when you have a Business Roadmap in place

A lot of professional services firms are generating healthy fee income while their margins are under pressure, and without targets in place, that can carry on for longer than it should before anyone notices.

That changes when you have a roadmap and you’re comparing it against your Growth Reports regularly. Rather than reacting to how last month went, you can see whether the business is going where you intended it to go.

For a lot of our clients, the real change is that decisions feel less like guesswork. When you know what the plan is and you can see how the business is tracking against it, decisions about hiring or investment come with a current picture of the consequences rather than a gut feel. That’s a different way to run a business.

Tax planning and your Business Roadmap

Every Business Roadmap includes a forward estimate of the likely tax position for the year. That figure is broken down monthly so you can see what’s building up as the year goes on, not just what arrives at the end of it.

We suggest putting money aside each month as the tax accrues through the year, so that when the payment falls due, it’s already there. The aim is that you never find out what you owe after the money’s already gone somewhere else.

If your tax bill arrives six months after your year end, you’re already six months too late. A Business Roadmap helps you plan for it while the money is still coming in.

Business Roadmaps planning session

Business Roadmaps

Use your numbers to see where the business is going

Find out more about Stay On Track Find out more about Grow With Confidence

FAQs

A Business Roadmap is your annual business budget, set out month by month. It shows your projected income and expenditure for each month, giving you targets to compare your actual results against as the year goes on. Rather than waiting until year end to find out how things went, you can see at any point whether you’re ahead or behind where you planned to be, and act on it while there’s still time.

At a minimum, your business budget should include projected income by month, your expected costs and the profit you’re planning to make, so you know what you’re working towards before the year starts. For a professional services firm, it’s worth breaking income down by service line or client type so you can see early if a particular area is underperforming rather than finding out at year end.

The clearest way is to have something to measure against throughout the year, not just at year end. If you have a month-by-month financial plan, you can compare your actual figures against it each quarter or month and see whether things are going to plan and where they’re drifting.

Start with a realistic projection of your fee income for the year, broken down by month, then work out your expected costs for the same period. The gap between them is your projected profit, and from that, you can work out roughly what the tax position looks like before the year starts. That’s the basis of a Business Roadmap.

For a professional services firm, quarterly is the minimum, and monthly is better. Reviewing once a year when the accounts arrive means finding out twelve months after the fact, with nothing left to act on.

Work out roughly what you’re likely to owe based on your projected profit for the year and build that figure into your financial plan from the start, broken down monthly. Set up a separate account and transfer the amount each month as it accrues, so that when the bill arrives, the money is already there.