Plansmith Blog

Plansmith is a planning company, as our name implies. For 50 years, budgeting has been what we’re known for. We get a lot of questions about our top budgeting advice, and as we kick off a new year, it’s the perfect time to offer some fresh tips for successful budgeting.

Though we certainly suggest using a robust budgeting solution like our Compass software, this advice applies to any process. We understand many organizations still use spreadsheets or outdated software, and that may work for them because they’re used to it. However, quality planning software makes budgeting much easier, more accurate, and more approachable for all parties involved – including the board during presentations.

So, what are some realistic tips for effective budgeting?

Most of us hate planning. So why would I want to start now, when I could wait until the usual time next year?

Actually, there are two great reasons to plan early and often:

For almost 50 years, Plansmith has helped financial institutions remove the stress from budgeting and interest rate risk.

As customer preferences and regulatory challenges progress, we create new solutions to complement our core in-house budgeting and IRR solutions.

Are you familiar with all of the ways Plansmith helps financial institutions like yours?

Backtesting can be a painful topic for bankers. In this post, I'll answer the top 5 most common questions I hear about backtesting. I'll reference my first post, Independent Review, Model Validation, and Backtesting: Same Thing, Only Different, so you might want to revisit it before reading on. In that blog, we looked at the interrelationship of these three items and brought up a few questions on backtesting.

Specifically, we questioned 5 things: who should do it, how often should it be done, what period should be covered, do you need to backtest model results and assumptions, and why even bother if market rates really aren’t changing.

Money isn't everything! Yeah, it's important, but it's not all that matters to employees -- and upping the pay scale isn't always possible. When a raise isn't an option, consider these three alternatives to reward your high-achieving employees.

True or False

A budget is a once a year process for an institution.

True: A budget is a process typically done once a year to establish targets/goals of measure to be used as guidelines throughout the year.

Thank you to everyone who attended the March 2016 Financial Compass Roundtable!

One of the worst ways to get someone to do something you want is to tell them what to do. Most parents learn that lesson the hard way. The better way to incent certain behaviors is to have the other person see the benefit of exhibiting the desired behavior.

As a CEO or CFO of a community bank, you are well aware that mega banking institutions are investing heavily in innovative technologies designed to take customers away from you. Having serviced the industry for over 25 years, I've seen many changes, but none as profound as outlined in two recent articles highlighting the impact of FinTech.

A Note to Attendees