At the end of each quarter, you may want to look back over your efforts at budgeting and other supervisory activities to get a measure of your performance. How well did you and your unit do? Sometimes, both the plan and budget are synchronous or show only minor discrepancies that are financially insignificant and do not reflect poorly on staff. Where differences are at 10 percent or more, you need to ask yourself what happened, starting with the planning phase. Look again at your goals. Were they too aggressive? In budgeting, were some costs or income more difficult to forecast than others? You might even ask yourself how well you did in monitoring the budget. Looking back, do you now realize that you unconsciously either overestimated or underestimated revenues and costs to make results more achievable and expenditures easier to control?
A former colleague of mine used to budget income at 10 percent less than she anticipated and expenses at 10 percent higher than trends indicated. She made budget, and indeed she looked good the first year or so—until people got wise to her approach.
The point is to learn from your effort at budgeting so that next year’s budget will be more accurate.