What is a Budget?

Controlling costs is an important aspect of business. Some individuals may determine that this is the single most important aspect of a financial position in an organization. A budget is an estimate of how much your costs will be for a given period. In finance and accounting, a very important aspect of accounting is to create a budget (an estimate of costs) and then compare the actual costs to the budget. The actual costs can typically be retrieved from your accounting software.

The Use of Spreadsheets in Budgeting

The reports that are generated from accounting software are not always user friendly. In many cases, there is nowhere for a budget to be entered. What happens when you have an expense in a category where there was no budget? By using a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, you can translate the report data into any format that you like. For example, you can group all of the different expense accounts based on a particular project. The possibilities are endless with the flexibility of a spreadsheet program.

Your Team Assignment - Budget

Your assignment is to create a one-year budget (forecast) as a team in Excel, based on the real estate company you set up. As a team you can decide when/if you would like to do the following real estate transactions. You will explain your decisions in your team's analysis paper.

Decisions:

1. Take cash/line of credit and purchase a complete one-bedroom, fixer-upper condo for $18,000. You will also need $7,000 to completely gut and rebuild the condo. This process will take one month after purchase; you are going to outsource the process. If you choose to take out a line of credit, you would have a 0% financing offer up to $25,000 for 15 months. Remember you can also use cash. You decide what you would charge for rent and the HOA fees would be the same as the other condo you purchased. The property taxes are $1,676 annually (139.67 per month)

2. Would you like to sell any of the properties? If so which one and why? Currently the appraisal on the condo is $135,000 and the house is $70,800.

3. What about raising the rent on the properties?

4. Are there any other business decisions you would like to make?

Part 2

Project Overview

This is a corresponding team analysis paper using the budget you created this module. You will write one cohesive team paper in which you provide:

1. Overview of your company

2. Summary of your transactions completed

3. Summary of your financial reports generated

4. Overview of your one-year budget and justification for writing your budget. How did you forecast your income and expenses?

5. What decisions did you make? Why did you chose to make those decisions?

6. Conclusion, summarize this business owners financial state. Does he/she have financial stability, why or why not?

The paper should be in Microsoft Word and it should be a minimum of 2 pages, not including the cover page. One paper should be completed per team, and it should include the team members' names on the cover page.