This is a comprehensive breakdown of How to Build Your Budget with each section explained for your convenience!

Select from the list below to jump to its spot within the article!

BUDGET TYPES

• LMN Express Budget
• LMN Operating Budget
• LMN Divisional Budget
  • If I Build a Budget for Each Division, How Should I Split Overhead? 
• Setting your Default Budgets

BUILDING YOUR BUDGET

• The Budget Information Page
• Building your Sales Budget
• Building your Field Labor Budget
• Building your Equipment Budget
• Building your Material Budget
• Building your Subcontracting Budget
• Building your Overhead Budget
• Reviewing your Forecast Profit/Loss
• Overhead Recovery
• Analyzing your Budget

BUDGET: SNOW

• How do I forecast Snow Revenue?
• How can I calculate Overhead for my Snow Division Only?
• What if I pay my staff a higher pay rate for certain kinds of work (i.e. snow & ice)?

 

LMN Express Budget

Create a Budget in under 5 minutes!  The purpose of the Express Budget is to save you time and allow you to do what you love faster - estimate. 

You'll notice when creating an LMN Budget, there are two options - Operating Budget or Express Budget.  This article will walk you through how to create an Express Budget.

Follow these simple steps to create a new Express Budget:

Step1:

• • • • Log into LMN and select Budget                               
      • Click +New to create a new Express Budget for your company

Step 2:

• • • • Review your Budget Info and choose from the 3 overhead recovery methods.  
        • LMN typically recommends MORS - Multiple Overhead Recovery as it recovers your total overhead expense over all the items that you sell - Labor, Equipment, Material, and Subs.  

Step 3:

• • • Enter your desired profit margin percentage and note, you can adjust your profit margin in the Item Catalog, on an entire Estimate, by Work Area or line item if needed.

Step 4:

• • • Activate your Express Budget and mark as your Standard and/ or Service default Budget if applicable.

Note: you need to select the defaults to make it apply

To view a video tutorial about creating an Express Budget, click HERE

LMN Operating Budget

The budget might be the most important thing you setup in LMN.  Your budget will guide how every estimate is priced, to ensure your estimates cover all of the costs of doing business and are profitable.

To create your LMN Operating Budget, make sure you have the following:

• A company Profit & Loss statement. If you are using accounting software, you should be able to pull a company P&L from reports.  If you are using a Bookkeeper, please request the Profit & Loss statement from them.
• You will need to enter your field and overhead equipment in your budget (even if you no longer have payments and own it) so you need your equipment information. You will need to specify whether pieces of equipment are owned or leased, and the life or length of time you would keep it for.
• Payroll information such as types of staff you have and the amount of hours that they work during the year.
• A couple of hours.  You should plan on spending approximately 5 to 8 hours to complete your first operating budget in LMN depending on the size of your business.  New users may take longer, depending on how organized their current financials are.  If you've built an LMN budget before, you'll likely be able to build your budget in just a few hours, using our Copy feature.  

To begin a new budget, click on your Budget tab in LMN and click +New

For a comprehensive breakdown on how to create your operational budget, scroll down or select from the menu above for the individual section guides!

Once all of the areas of the budget are built out, activate the budget and set your defaults! 

Note: you need to select the defaults to make it apply

To view a video tutorial about creating an Operational Budget, click HERE

LMN Divisional Budget

(*LMN Professional/Enterprise Subscriptions Only)

Some companies like to have a different Budget set up for each Division so they can track profitability based on that Division alone rather than the company as a whole. For example, you may want a different Budget for your maintenance division than for your installation, and that is possible with LMN through Divisional Budgets.

To set up Divisional Budgets, you will first need your full company Budget built. You will then follow these steps :

1. Make a copy of your company Budget, editing the name to reflect the Division you are creating the Budget for
2. Once in the copied Budget, you will want to clean up each section and delete the irrelevant information - starting with the Sales tab, simply remove the sales income lines that are unrelated to this Division. If you are creating a Maintenance Divisional Budget, then your Construction income will not be relevant sales information for this Budget.
3. Repeat the same for each section (Field Labor, Equipment, Materials, Subs)
4. Once completed, saved and activated, you have now created a Divisional Budget for that Division - you can then go back to the original Company Budget, make another copy, and follow these instructions again to consider the next Division within your company.

If I Build A Budget for Each Division, How Should I Split Overhead?

When creating Divisional Budgets (ie, for your Maintenance, Install, Snow divisions), there are three methods to consider when splitting your Overhead:

• By Sales
• By Time
• By Analysis (recommended)

The table below outlines a brief description of how to use these methods along with their pros and cons and some examples to draw from.

A spreadsheet is available for you to download to assist you with determining the proportions of your Expenses/Expense Accounts across your divisions of work.

Click here to download the Splitting Overhead By Division spreadsheet.

 

To view a video tutorail about Divisional Budgets, click HERE

 

Setting your Default Budgets

Before you dive deep into pricing, and especially before you get into estimating, you're going to want to setup your default budgets.  You need to do this even if you don't have access to budgeting so that your cost, overhead recovery, and profit information are set accurately.

You can setup LMN to use default budget(s) for pricing standard jobs (install/design-build work) and for pricing service jobs (maintenance/recurring service work)

To setup your default budgets:

1. Click the Settings wheel on the bottom left of your screen 
2. Select Estimate Settings
3. As long as your company has an Active Budget, you will be able to set your defaults as shown below.  Use the drop down menus for Standard and Service Estimates to select your default budget for each Estimate type.
4. Click Save Changes to save the budgets as your default budgets.

   Going forward, every new estimate you create will point to the default budget for overhead recovery and profit information.

    

Default Budget Tips

• • If your company does not have any Active Budgets - You will get a warning message, or you will see [SAMPLE] budgets set to default.  You need to have an Active company budget before proceeding.
  • If your company does not have any Active Budgets and you do not have access to LMN Budgets - You will have to request that your Company's Super Admin activates your company budget before you can proceed to pricing and estimating.
  • Make sure you're using the right budget - Check with your Super Admin/company owner at least 4 times per year to make sure you are using the correct default budget for pricing work.  Using old budgets can lead to pricing mistakes.
  • Companies with multiple divisional budgets - Users can have their own default budgets - useful for companies who operate multiple divisions.  If you are a Super Admin/company owner and you create a new budget that you wish to use for estimating be sure to create a To-Do for your estimators to switch their default budgets to the new budget.  

 

The Budget Information Page

Budget Info

• Add your Budget Name and select your Budget Year to begin.  
• The Budget Status will be set to Under Construction until you Activate the Budget.

• Indicate the percentage of work you do in the Work Breakdown fields provided.

• These fields cannot be customized as they link to Industry Average numbers which will be used for comparison purposes throughout your budget.

Please note: We don't view/look at user's LMN data for statistical analysis. 

We originally gathered 6 public, industry studies and averaged out the numbers.  We've since vetted those benchmarks with our own experiences.  We've taught over 3,000 contractors how to build a budget in our workshops and we've kept an eye on industry benchmark studies as they are released.  We continue to re-analyze and update (if necessary) our benchmarks each year to ensure we're supplying the best data we can.  

Hitting the benchmarks provided doesn't guarantee success or profits, but they're good representations of financially successful companies in the landscape and snow and ice industry.

 

Building Your Sales Budget

Sales Forecast Information

The key number in the sales budget is the Forecast which will indicate your Forecast Sales for the budget year; Your Previous numbers would be from the year prior.

• We recommend breaking your sales down by Division Type (see screenshot below).
• If you use an accounting software and wish to add your Account IDs to your LMN Budget, use the Acct. ID field provided.

Sales Forecast Tips

• Include all cash sales in your LMN budget - even if you don't report those sales in your accounting.  Without cash sales, your numbers, and profit margins, will be inaccurate and will cause pricing errors.

• Review the Forecast Sales in the middle tile at the top of the sales budget.  Make sure your forecast is realistic.  Being too aggressive, or too conservative can lead to mistakes in pricing.

• Don't worry about creating a perfect budget right away.  When you get to the Analysis Tab of your budget, you will have a chance to review and edit if desired.  Even after a budget is activated, it can still be updated.

• Use your sales budget as a tool for setting up the default profit margins for your estimates. If your budget's net profit is set to 4%, then your estimates will default to 4% as well.

• By setting your sales budget to achieve a specific net profit, you'll make sure your estimates' pricing defaults to the same net profit.

• If you do not want to adjust your sales goals as they stand, you can add a new line to your sales tab, called Adjustment to indicate the adjusted sales amount used to increase your profit margin, as shown below.

To view a video tutoial on creating your Sales Budget, click HERE

Building Your Field Labor Budget

The purpose of this guide is just to give you a quick overview of the field labor tab within your LMN Budget.

 

 

 Field Labor Information

• Make sure you've added Field Labor Burden % to budget for payroll taxes, worker's comp fees, and unemployment insurance (national average is between 15% and 25%).  Unsure how to calculate your Labor Burden? 
• If you pay overtime, ensure you have selected the correct Overtime Multiplier.

• Make sure you've only included staff whose time you estimate on jobs! (e.g. crew leads, crew members, lead hands, operators).
• Try to be general when adding your Employee Types - we suggest breaking this down by Employee Role as opposed to adding individual staff members by name.
• Average your staff wages out to have one line for each position type in your company (e.g. Construction - Crew Lead, Maintenance - Laborer, etc.)
• We have two options for staff on this page: Hourly vs. Salary.  Make sure you add any staff who are paid by the hour to the Hourly Field Staff area and any staff who are on salary to the Salary Field Staff area. You can click on the header to switch between the two pay types.

Field Labor Tips

• Make sure you have not included anyone whose time you do not include on estimates (e.g. mechanics, office admin, estimators).  Have a staff member that divides their time between the field and the office? 
• Check your payroll hour forecasts.  Compare it with last year's payroll records for accuracy.  If your forecasting significantly more sales, make sure you're budgeting for more payroll hours to get the increased work done.  You may need more staff and/or more hours.
• Check wages for updates.  If you plan on raise(s), make sure they are in your budget.
• Unsure if you will be giving bonuses?  Leave as zero for now.

To view a video tutorial about creating your Field Labor Budget, click HERE

Building Your Equipment Budget

The purpose of this article is just to give you a quick overview of the equipment tab within your LMN Budget.

Equipment Information

• Only include vehicles/equipment that go onsite to jobs.  Any other equipment (e.g. owner's truck, a loader at the yard, small tools/equip) belongs in the overhead budget.
• In the General Expenses section, make sure you do not include 100% of your costs.  Some of your fuel/repairs/insurance/other goes to overhead vehicles.  Estimate the % you should assign to your equipment budget vs. the % you should assign to your overhead budget.  (e.g. if you spent $25,000 in fuel and you have 1 owners truck and 4 crew trucks, you might allocate 80% of fuel to your equipment budget and 20% to your overhead budget).

• Do not forget to include a forecast for Equipment rentals in the Equip Summary.

 

Equipment Classes

You will have four options for your Equipment Class: Owned, Leased, Group and Custom.

Please see more information about the Equipment Class options below.

Owned

• Use the Owned equipment calculator for any equipment that you either own outright, or are financing with the intent to own.
• Tips for the Owned equipment calculator:
  
  • The equipment calculator's Replacement Value should be what you'd spend on a replacement, not what it's worth today (e.g. If you buy new trucks for $35,000, but you have one that is 8 years old now, use $35,000 for the replacement cost, not the value the truck is worth today).
  • Include all the years you'd expect to own the equipment, not just the number of years remaining (e.g. If you keep your trucks for 8 years on average, and you have a truck that is 6 years old, you should budget for the full replacement value and the full years life (8 years) not just the 2 years remaining).
  • Use the Inflation/Interest Rate to budget for interest payments and/or use 1%-2% to keep up with annual inflation.

Leased

• Use the Leased equipment calculator for equipment that you lease.

Group

• Use the Group equipment calculator for groups of equipment that go together (e.g. Maintenance Trailer + Tools).
• Tips for the Group equipment calculator:
• Include any expensive equipment you have in your trailers (ie. Mowers, Blowers, Trimers, etc.).
• You do not need to add small tools individually to this list. Instead, you can add them in as a line item in the Group area (ie. Hand tools).

Custom

• Use the Custom equipment calculator if you want to enter your own annual equipment recovery costs.

Equipment Tips

• You should budget for all of your equipment, even if it's "paid off".  You should be charging your customers to use it and saving to replace it.
• Remember - your budget is a forecast.  If you plan on buying more equipment this year, you should include that equipment in your budget.

If I own my equipment and have no payments, do I still need to include it in my budget?

Absolutely.  One of the biggest mistakes contractors make is not charging for equipment they own.

Once equipment no longer has any payments, it doesn't show up as a 'cost' anymore on the books.  When it stops showing up as a cost, many contractors fail to charge for it.

The consequences are predictably terrible.

• You are giving away one of your biggest assets to people you barely know!  (your customers)
• Your profits are paying for the fuel, repairs, etc. incurred in operating the equipment
• You are not recovering any money to replace the equipment when its run out of useful life.  

This results in equipment that gets old, breaks down often, causes all kinds of wasted hours and inefficiency and worst of all, the contractor is often stuck with this older equipment because they don't have the cash-on-hand to replace the equipment without payments.

It's essential that you include equipment recovery costs in your budget to ensure your customers are paying for the use of your equipment, and that you can afford to equip your crews with the most efficient vehicles and equipment for the job.

 

To view a video tutorial to creat your Equipment Budget, click HERE

 

Building Your Material Budget

Material Information

Most companies can leave the Materials Tax section at 0% because sales taxes paid on materials are already included in their accounting totals for material spending last year.  Only use the material tax section at the top if:

• You pay sales tax on all materials  AND
• The cost of sales taxes are not included in your forecast amounts.

•  
• Similar to your Sales Forecast, we recommend breaking your Materials down by Division Type:
• The key number in the materials budget is the Forecast which will indicate your Forecast for the budget year. Your Previous numbers would be from the year prior.

Materials Tip!

Make sure you're forecasting enough materials to keep up with your forecast sales goal (e.g. if you're forecasting more sales than last year, you're likely going to need to forecast more materials)

 

To view a video tutorial on creating your Material Budget, click HERE

Building Your Subcontracting Budget