The purpose of an income statement is to describe the delivery of products or the provision of services. This purpose is seen as an end result of Financial Planning but this purpose can be seen as a starting point of Financial Planning. As a starting point of Financial Planning people should think about how to accumulate wealth from the delivery of products or the provision of services.

In 1992 a professor named Robert Kaplan and a consultant named David Norton created a measurement system called The Balanced Scorecard.  A reason for creating The Balanced Scorecard was to go beyond financial statements in measuring what businesses do in order to improve performance.

Spreadsheets are a great tool to build and maintain ad-hoc calculations, quickly draft a business plan and create good-looking reports. But when it comes to planning and budgeting in a complex business environment the flexibility of spreadsheets is often quick to become an obstacle instead of an asset in your planning process.

Financial Planning is a process of thinking. One of the end results from this process is a product called a budget. A budget is a product that expresses thoughts. As a product a budget must be created and its creation must have a foundation. The foundation for creating a budget is answers to three basic questions.

Among the difficult subjects for FP&A and management, there is the very “sensitive” relation between budget or forecast and managers compensation scheme. 

When preparing the implementation of a planning and forecasting system I am often asked if we can just take the existing spreadsheet solution and squeeze this into the new system. Invariably my answer is: Yes, we can do this, but we should not. Why?