Working with a remote team is quite challenging, but many small businesses believe that this is the best solution considering their limited budgets. That being said, you can make this setup work out if you approach it correctly. Here are five rules for beginners about budgeting for remote teams.

#1 Set Aside Some Time

There is a common misconception that working with a remote team means that you will have more free time for all of your tasks, but the opposite is true. When all of your team members are located in different places, it is much harder to gather everyone together when you need to brainstorm an idea or make an important announcement. Likewise, there are some precautions that should be taken when discussing the budget.

First of all, you will need to set aside some time specifically for discussing the budget. Make sure that you don’t mix it with anything else you want to do. For instance, don’t make an announcement and then immediately move on to discuss the budget for a certain project. However, you can have a video conference to discuss the details of a project and then move on to discussing the project’s budget.

#2 Bring Your Team Together

Speaking of bringing your team together, it is important that you always discuss budgeting with them instead of making all the necessary decisions on your own. This will not only prevent miscommunication and misunderstandings but will also promote trust and loyalty in your team. Moreover, you will be able to avoid situations when you expected the expenses to be smaller than they turn out to be in reality.

Video conferences are probably the best way to gather your team. You could also try group voice calls when the connection is poor. However, refrain from using group chats for discussing your budget. Firstly, it is easier to hack your messages and see your texts. Secondly, you can expect group chats to be way more chaotic than voice calls or video conferences.

#3 Create Your Budgeting Plan

Having a budgeting plan is probably the most important aspect of budgeting no matter if you work with an in-house or a remote team. A budgeting will ensure that you know what you are doing and have a clear goal in mind when it comes to expenses, profit, and so on. At the same time, a budgeting plan also gives you certain restrictions that you should keep in mind when deciding what to spend your budget on.

There are two ways you can go about creating your budgeting plan. You can either create it on your own or you can hire someone, a writer from a review site like Online Writers Rating, who will have enough experience and skills to create the plan for you. In the latter case, you will need to collect as much information from your team as possible to give the writer a clear idea about what you want. But, of course, it is recommended that you do it yourself.

#4 Always Question Your Decisions

It’s great to have the confidence to make serious decisions about your budget, but you should also remember to have a fair share of uncertainty inside you and questions your decisions. This will enable you to make more objective and reasonable decisions about your budget instead of acting on impulse or not taking into account all the necessary factors that would help you determine what is the right path to take.

For example, say you want to set aside a certain part of your budget for social media marketing to promote your brand. Instead of taking a wild guess about how much you should spend on it, find statistics about how much others are spending. Then, try to use a similar amount. But remember that you can always try to cut costs (e.g. social media marketing can be managed even without a budget at all).

#5 Get Input from All Departments

Last but not least, try to get all the opinions and get input from all your departments. This is similar to questioning your decisions, but while questioning yourself will ensure that you don’t do something stupid, getting input from everyone on your team will help you get all perspectives on the situation and more ideas on what kind of solution you need. 

Considering that you work with a remote team, you will probably have one or two specialists in each department. In fact, you might not even divide your team into departments and instead prefer to keep everyone close. In this case, brainstorming what to do with your budget will be as easy as you can imagine it could be.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, by following these simple five tips, you will be able to manage your budget much better with your remote team. Double-check your decisions and have a clear goal in mind to ensure that you are moving in the right direction.

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About Frank Hamilton: 

Frank Hamilton has been working as an editor at essay review service Best Writers Online. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.