Little is more important to a business's success than planning. Setting financial goals and documenting those plans is called budgeting. Unfortunately, many small business owners and managers can't be convinced that making plans and measuring success against those plans is a worthy use of their time. As a result, businesses flounder, fail, and never really know what went wrong. Often they overspent, didn't allocate their resources wisely and didn't sell enough because there were no formal plans for where to spend their money and how much sales they needed to bring in. Either that, or there were plans, but they were quickly forgotten in the hustle and bustle of business.

Select a topic or two from Chapter 14 that you think is important regarding budgeting and share your insights on it. For those that are homemakers, maybe the chapter gave you new insights into your family finances.

Some suggestions might include (but please feel free to find your own):

Budgeting and human behavior (i.e. management and other employees' attitude toward the budget).
The accuracy of forecasts. What happens if we're too optimistic or too conservative?
The statement that "Little is more important to business success than effective cash management".
Planning is the first step. Now the plans have to be followed!