Apartment Budget Time Suck

Ah! With budget season coming to an end, it will feel good to ease my way back into the blogging world. It’s been way too long. So, if I am rusty with words and concepts bear with me.

To kick it off, I have decided to start and ongoing series dedicated to questions that I ask myself throughout the course of any given year.

The subject matter will be all over the place but central to the ongoing operations of an apartment management business.

I hope to keep the posts brief and to the point [200 words+/-].

With that, let’s see how it goes…

To start: What do you do to streamline your budget process?

Every year from September until the later parts of December we nearly stall our home office operation to write our property operating budgets. To me it is one of those necessary evils of doing business. That is to suggest that the end product is a well thought through playbook for not only the year to come but the ten to twelve years beyond that.  As such, it demands prudence in its preparation. But, what suffers?

Nearly all the fundamentals get the semi-thoughtful but certainly not mindful once over review. Everything is surface and there is little time to dig in to the really important stuff. In all fairness this year was the best one on record. That said, we are always looking to approve.

Would love to hear your feedback on the subject.

Trusting you will have an amazing 2012.

M