Ontario Girl Guides of Canada

At the beginning of each guiding year, you should prepare a budget estimating the amounts of Revenue and Expenses planned for the year. Budgets can be revised during the year to reflect changed plans and resources. If you revise your budget, keep the original as a reference. Fill out the Annual Unit Budget Calculator and keep this for your files.

The budget is simply a plan of action and a guideline to help you manage resources effectively during the year. The budget is a very useful tool to refer to throughout the year to see how your revenues and expenses are accumulating. It will indicate to you that you are doing OK and staying within budget or that you need to increase your revenues or decrease spending so that you will stay on track for the remainder of the year. The annual budget should be approved by all the Unit Guiders in your Unit.

It is important to budget so that you can make sure you have the revenue needed to cover your expenses and this will ensure that your unit does not go into deficit. By doing this, you will allow yourself time to plan things and come up with ways to avoid this from happening. Make sure you have enough money in your unit account to cover the costs that you will have throughout the year.

First you will need to take into consideration how you will be making the money to cover activities that you will like to plan. Once you have a plan of how you will generate the revenue, you may start planning activities and pricing each activity out accordingly. Do your research and refer to Quick Tip 11 for further detail on what to consider.