Best Practice Preparation Tools
The following Excel workbook, available for download below, is not required to be included in the annual budget submission to the Comptroller's Office. The workbook should be viewed as a best practice tool to aid in the budget building process. The budget summary tab creates a financial overview of each fund, the debt service tab provides a debt service schedule blueprint, and the cash flow forecast tab assists with creating an overview of monthly cash flows. The various revenue estimator tools can be used to help forecast property tax, sales tax, city state shared, and other revenues.
Cash Flow Management
A local government’s ability to track how much revenue is coming into the government and how much is going out is vital to its fiscal health. Local governments that rely heavily on property taxes will need larger cash reserves to fund governmental services until tax revenue is received. Prior to its adoption, the budget must contain adequate revenues along with cash on hand to fund the government throughout the year. In addition, local governments need to have plans in place if additional sources of liquidity either internally (interfund tax anticipation note “TAN”) or externally (bank issued TAN) prove to be necessary. [TCA § 9-21-801]
Forecasting Budgetary Amounts
Mechanisms for forecasting revenues and expenditures that consider economic trends and growth rates provide for reliable revenue estimates. Local governments that do not routinely forecast budgetary amounts may find revenues overstated and expenditures understated [TCA § 9-21-403]. The various revenue estimator tools in the below Excel download can be used to help forecast property tax, sales tax, city state shared, and other revenues.
Click a tile below to download a copy of the corresponding document.
Schedules and Tools Example
The below Schedules and Tools workbook has been prefilled with example data for illustration purposes.
Schedules and Tools Template
The below Schedules and Tools workbook allows the user to enter their local government's data.