What is budgeting and forecasting?
A budget that survives contact with the actuals.
The budget most Australian small businesses have actually used was built by one person against the calendar year they're used to thinking in, then quietly ignored the moment it stopped matching the financial year the accounts actually run on. It's a single annual total, divided by twelve, with no one outside the owner's own head having agreed to any of the individual assumptions in it. When July's actuals land against a budget nobody but the owner ever saw, there's no manager whose line it was, no one to explain the miss, and the comparison gets skipped rather than used.
Building it bottom-up changes that. Each cost centre or department lead sizes their own line before anything gets rolled up — the person managing the sales pipeline sizes revenue by month, whoever owns the wages bill sizes headcount against the actual hiring and rostering plan, the person who manages supplier relationships sizes cost against real contract renewal dates. A number a manager helped set is one they'll own when a variance against it shows up later in the year, which is the entire reason to build a budget bottom-up rather than have one person guess every line alone.
Why it matters
| Without a system | With CapEasy |
|---|---|
| Decisions made on last year’s numbers | A forecast that is updated from the actual close |
| Pricing set by feel | Knowing which work makes money and which does not |
| Cash surprises that were visible months earlier | Numbers you can defend in a funding conversation |
What we need from you
Foundation
- A clean, current set of books
- At least a few periods of history
- Budget or plan, if one exists
Context
- Pricing and cost structure
- Headcount plan
- Anything you are about to decide
How it runs, step by step
- Planning & forecasting
- Cash flow forecasting
- Budgeting and re-forecasting
- Scenario modelling
- Profitability
- Job, product or service profitability
- Margin analysis
- Cost optimisation review
- Financial modelling & valuation support
- Three-statement models
- Unit economics
- Valuation analysis and supporting workings
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Budgeting and forecasting, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Budgeting and forecasting in Australia
A budget is an internal management document — no Australian Accounting Standard governs its shape
A management budget is forward-looking and internal, and no AASB standard applies to it the way one applies to financial statements the accountant finalises. That means the structure, the level of detail, and the format the budget takes are design choices made for how the business actually plans, not requirements imposed by a reporting standard. We build it around what the managers who own each line will genuinely use, because no external standard dictates the shape.
GST and tax lines in the budget are cost estimates, not a BAS or tax position
Under TASA 2009 s.90-10, a BAS service means ascertaining or advising on a liability, obligation, or entitlement under a BAS provision — and that line matters here because a budget genuinely needs a GST and tax expense estimate as a cash-planning input. The budget's tax and GST lines are built from the registered BAS or tax agent's own historical figures and guidance, never from an independent calculation of what's owed on the year's projected transactions, which is exactly the boundary a budgeting engagement stays on the correct side of.
Superannuation guarantee is budgeted against the legislated rate, not estimated informally
SG sits on a legislated annual increase path under the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 — the rate has been rising by set increments each 1 July until it reaches its final legislated level, and a wages budget built on last year's rate will understate every pay run from that date forward. The budget applies the current legislated rate and its next scheduled step-up to headcount and wage projections; it does not determine SG liability for a specific worker or resolve an employee-versus-contractor classification question, both of which stay with the registered agent.
A financing or structure scenario in the budget is not tax or entity advice
Modeling a planned facility, an equipment loan, or a capital injection in the budget sizes the cash timing and the resulting repayment line — it isn't an evaluation of which financing is right for the business or whether a trust, company, or sole-trader structure suits it better. Those are advisory and TASA-governed judgments outside this scope. Where a budget models a scenario under an assumed structure because the business is genuinely deciding between options, it reflects whatever the accountant or registered agent has confirmed, not a recommendation the budget itself is making.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- A finished annual budget, built bottom-up with the manager or cost-centre lead who owns each revenue and cost line, aligned to the business's actual financial year.
- The budget loaded directly into the accounting platform's own budget feature, mapped account-for-account against the live chart of accounts, so a budget-vs-actual pull needs no manual re-mapping.
- A calendarised, period-by-period phasing of every material line — seasonal trading patterns, hire start dates, the 1 July SG rate step-up, supplier contract renewal timing — rather than an annual total divided evenly by twelve.
- A written assumptions log naming who owns each line, what it's built on (a pipeline number, a rostering plan, a supplier contract, the agent's own tax or GST estimate), and when it was last confirmed with that owner.
- A cost-centre worksheet for each budget owner, showing their line at the detail they gave it, so a manager can see their own figures reflected accurately in the consolidated total.
- A headcount and wage cost plan, timed by pay period, built against current SG obligations and the legislated rate schedule.
