A budget that reflects how the business actually runs, a forecast that updates as things change, and a clear view of cash thirteen weeks out.
Most plans fail on the first contact with reality. The budget gets built in December, and by March nobody opens the file. A plan that works is closer to a running instrument: built on how the business actually operates, checked against results every month, and adjusted when the assumptions turn out wrong. That's the version worth your time.
Baum's Accounting Services was founded in Lexington, KY on 18 years of controller, CFO, and advisory work. Eight of those years were spent leading finance at a mortgage bank, where forecasting was the difference between a good quarter and a scramble. That background shows up in how the planning work gets done: fewer slides, more math you can defend, and a model the leadership team can actually run against during the year.
The starting point is the current picture, not a template. Where revenue comes from, what it costs to deliver, which months run tight, and what the balance sheet can support. From there the annual budget gets built line by line with the people who own those lines, so the numbers belong to the operators and not to a spreadsheet. Then it becomes a rolling exercise. Actuals come in, variances get explained, and the forecast for the rest of the year moves accordingly. By the fourth month you're planning against what's true, not against what looked reasonable last fall.
Profit and cash are different animals, and growing companies feel the gap hardest. Receivables stretch. Inventory or work in progress ties up money before anyone bills for it. A strong quarter can drain the account instead of filling it. The 13-week cash flow forecast is the tool for this. Every week it lays out what's coming in, what's going out, and where the balance lands, far enough ahead to do something about a shortfall. It also makes the tradeoffs visible: whether the equipment purchase waits a month, whether the hire starts in April instead of February, whether the line of credit gets drawn or left alone.
Companies rarely have one margin. They have dozens, hiding inside a single blended number on the income statement. One crew is carrying the others. One location covers its overhead and one doesn't. A service line everybody likes turns out to be the reason cash is tight. Getting to that view means the chart of accounts, the job costing, and the allocations all have to be set up to answer the question. Once they are, the reporting shows margin by project, department, location, or revenue stream every month. Pricing conversations get much shorter after that, and so do the arguments about where to put the next dollar.
Plans get more useful when they can absorb a question. What happens to cash if the biggest customer pays thirty days later. What the second location does to overhead before it does anything for revenue. Whether the business can carry the debt service on new equipment through a slow season. Scenario work runs those cases through the same model, so the answer comes back in dollars and dates rather than opinions. That's usually what a leadership team is missing when a decision stalls. Not more discussion, just a version of the future specific enough to agree or disagree with.
No. This work sits entirely on the business side: budgets, forecasts, cash planning, and margin analysis for the company. Baum's Accounting Services doesn't give investment advice or handle personal portfolios. When a business decision has personal implications for the owner, We will say so and suggest bringing your own advisor into that part of the conversation.
Some cleanup usually comes first, because a forecast built on unreliable history is just a guess with formatting. How much cleanup depends on what's wrong. Sometimes it's a chart of accounts that grew without a plan. Sometimes reconciliations have been skipped for months. The first look tells you what has to be corrected before the planning work will hold up.
Monthly is the common rhythm, tied to the close, with the cash forecast refreshed weekly. Companies in the middle of something big, a build-out or an acquisition or a rough stretch, often go to every other week for a while and then settle back. The cadence is set at the start of the engagement and revisited whenever the business changes.
Other work in this area that tends to come up in the same conversation.
Lenders ask for specific documents in a specific form. Getting the package right the first time is usually the difference in the timeline.
Read moreWhat the business is worth and what's driving that number, whether the reason is a sale, a partner buyout, or planning ahead.
Read moreTurning where you want the company to go into a financial plan with the numbers, timing, and funding attached to each step.
Read moreBook a consultation. No pressure to decide anything on the call.
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