Tips for Kicking off Your Budget Season

James Russell-Field, Communications Chair and Director of Administrative Services for the Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District & Andre Aberdeen, Account Executive with Questica and Communications Committee member

It’s that time of year again! Budget development is a special time of the year and requires a lot of planning, coordination, and communication to develop an efficient process to pull the budget together.

Has your budget season kicked off yet? Whether it has already kicked off or is about to be underway, read on for some tips from our CSMFO members!

A very special thanks to Brent Sakaida, Budget Officer at the City of Thousand Oaks, Jodi Coco, Budget Manager at the City of Escondido, and other anonymous contributors for sharing your expertise and insights!

Preparation

  • Learn from the prior budget process, meet with staff to see what went well and where improvement is needed.
  • Consider implementing budget software, if not already implemented, to make your budget process more efficient.  An end-to-end system that allows for collaborative budgeting and is user-friendly results in a more accurate budget document and more time for analyzing data and long-range financial planning.
  • Participate in the CSMFO/GFOA budget award process and improve your Operating and Capital Improvement Program Budgets by incorporating comments received from their review.
  • Look at other city budgets to see where you can improve on your own budget documents.
  • Attend budget workshops/webinars (CSMFO/GFOA).

Communication & Training

  • Prepare a Budget Calendar to ensure the process moves and is on-target to meet proposed expectations, as well as meetings with City staff, management, and Council.
  • In addition to creating a Budget Calendar, make a separate list to advise department managers about the critical action items to accomplish.
    • Maintain effective communications with staff throughout the process to make sure processes and deadlines are met.
    • Build trust with your budget team by meeting deadlines, maintaining excellent communication, providing great customer service, finding ways to make the budget process more efficient, demonstrating confidence and high integrity, being an active listener and staying calm under pressure, keeping a positive attitude and good sense of humor, and making yourself available for budget assistance during the entire budget process.
  • Provide budget process manuals, budget software manuals, and other policy documentation to new budget team members to review prior to the start of the budget season, if possible.
    • Offer budget team members one-on-one assistance. Set up a meeting, provide a brief overview of the budget process and budget document, and allow them to ask questions to help guide the conversation to ensure they are on the same page.

Execution

  • Start early and understand each stage of your Budget process.
  • Understand what information or process could be delayed.  Proactively engage those events or contacts to try and solve issues and delays before they happen.
  • Maintain communications with City Council, management, and staff:
  • Work with City management to ensure City Council updates their Goals and Top Priorities.
  • Work with staff on the planning and execution of your City’s community engagement.
  • Work with staff to update your City’s website related to the Budget Process, community engagement, and transparency tools.
  • Work with staff while they develop and update their Department budgets.
  • Follow through with internal and external engagement. 
    • Engage with the public through seminars and other open channels. 
    • Engage with internal clients and department contacts through different information collection tools (such as budget software, capital asset forms, FTE allocation forms, etc.) and meetings.  
  • Maintain a big picture perspective and collect necessary details to build forecast and information models and translate the budget process into the annual budget book.
    • Work to put the Budget books together for City management, City Council, and resident review, as well as submission to CSMFO/GFOA for their Budget Award process and review.

Looking for more CSMFO resources on developing and monitoring your agency’s budget? Check out several budget-specific sessions at the 2022 CSMFO Annual Conference.

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James Russell-Field, Communications Chair and Director of Administrative Services for the Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District. James has served on various committees and roles supporting CSMFO. Prior to the District, he worked with the Department of Interior, City of Thousand Oaks, and City of Benicia. On weekends, you can find James mountain biking through Northern California.

Andre Aberdeen, Account Executive with Questica and Communications Committee member. For over 15 years, he has worked with hundreds of public sector organizations throughout North America, to help streamline their budgeting processes. In his role, André strives to understand the ever-changing needs of municipalities, School Boards, and Healthcare agencies, as they navigate through the budget cycle. The constant engagement with front-line budget staff, has allowed André to tailor solutions that are unique to each client. His ultimate goal is to see finance and budget staff spending more time doing reporting and analysis, rather than clerical tasks many are faced with today.