Finance Follows Strategy: Annual Forecasting With Drew Romney

In this episode, I'm talking with Trainual's Director of Finance, Drew Romney. This episode is about structuring your annual forecasting and why finance follows strategy.

The holiday music is playing when you walk through the retail stores, and that means it's time for strategic planning and forecasting. So as we approach the end of this year, I thought what better conversation to start to surface than one about how we do forecasting inside our business.

I invited our director of finance, Drew Romney, onto the show. We talked through how Trainual does forecasting, how you should think about forecasting in your business, what metrics and numbers you need to have in order to do the forecasting exercise, and how to communicate it to your team. So if you are thinking about forecasting, about budgeting, about your numbers for next year, then you're going to get a lot out of this conversation.

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Quote of The Episode:

"As long as you have that cadence of looking at your forecasting monthly or quarterly, you won't find yourself in too big of an issue. I think you have to be flexible, but at the same time understand that it's not going to be perfect going forward." - Drew Romney

‍Topics Covered:

• Understand your P&L statement. (3:53)
• Avoid this forecasting mistake. (10:03)
• What you need to have in order for forecasting. (16:48)
• Month by month forecasting with a waterfall chart. (21:17)
• Forecasting in an unpredictable market. (24:17)
• How to have an unlimited marketing budget. (30:33)
• Communicating forecasting with your team. (36:48)

Resources:

• Follow Drew Romney on LinkedIn.
• Build your own waterfall chart with this free template!
• Want more on SMB finance? Check out these resources...
• Leveraging working capital for your e-commerce business.
• 5 financial habits you need to have.