---
title: Community Bankers, There's Room For Improvement
description: Community Bankers, There's Room For Improvement
image: https://blog.plansmith.com/hubfs/TheresMoreRoomImprovement.jpg
---

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# Plansmith Blog

# Community Bankers, There's Room For Improvement

Posted by [Bill Smith](https://blog.plansmith.com/author/bill-smith) on 3/2/15 5:30 PM

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Most community bank and credit union boards and executives spend a lot of time looking at past performance data. But many only look at projected data once a year at budget time.

Seems backwards to me. As George Bush (the older one) said, "The past is over". The future is unlimited. We can do nothing to change what has happened, but we can do anything to change the future.

So why not spend a little time looking ahead rather than back?

Plansmith’s Financial Compass automatically re-forecasts every time additional data is added. Most of our clients update both financial and rate forecast data at least every month, but many of them ignore the re-projected results until it’s time to work on the budget.

Most financial institutions produce monthly variance reports that compare budget to actual results. But only a few also look at variance between the re-projected results and the original budget.

These "future Variance" reports can be setup in less than 5 minutes. Once setup, they can be added to a report script so that each month they are updated with virtually no effort.

Here’s the exciting part – if you don’t like the results of your future projections you can try ideas for solving the problem. If you don’t run these future reports, you might not even know you have a problem.

So here’s my offer. Give me a call if you want help setting up a simple set of powerful future variance reports. Once you start looking at these new reports, if you don’t end up making more money and growing faster, I’ll eat my hat.

 Topics: [community bank](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/community-bank), [community bank strategy](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/community-bank-strategy), [community bank ALCO](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/community-bank-alco), [community bank interest rate risk](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/community-bank-interest-rate-risk), [community bank budget](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/community-bank-budget), [fintech](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/fintech), [ALCO](https://blog.plansmith.com/topic/alco)

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