Invision Power Board: Budgets, Cash Flow, Income and Charles Dickens - Invision Power Board

I’m not the right person to turn to for advice on matters of high finance, or low finance for that matter. The present banking crisis leaves me as befuddled as the next man, assuming that the next man is a slack jawed yokel who can’t understand why the banks don’t start putting some of their profits to work to help smaller businesses get going again. But like I said, I don’t have much of a clue.
Being more of an Eng Lit man than an Economics guru, I take my financial advice from Charles Dickens whose Mr Micawber described financial happiness thus:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

All of which brings me to the fascinating topic of cash flow. Yesterday I was on the phone to mate and looking at City’s remaining home league fixtures. Five, as it happens. That’s five opportunities to get people through the gate, sell then 50/50 tickets and raffle tickets, to take some money through the bar, to shift some gear from the shop. Five chances to generate some income. In March, we have one home game. Bills will need to be met just the same as they would be if we had four home games.

So how does the club cope? Beats me, guvnor. I’ve no inside track; I’ve no idea how much the bar generates. I don’t even know if it hosts events every Friday and Saturday night. But by taking off my socks and doing some back of the fag packet sums, I can’t see where the big income streams are coming from. The gate is ok-ish by recent standards although we weren’t helped by a run of six consecutive home matches, some of which were midweek when we dipped under 200. But surely, we need better than ok-ish to keep on an even keel?

City are doing well in the Southern League and look pretty comfortable at this level. There is the occasional blip but the playing record speaks for itself. Plenty of wins, lots of goals and much easy on the eye football. In terms of how they go about their business, this team delights the fans. No problems there – unless you count promotion as a problem. Which I do.

The general rule is that the higher you play, the bigger the crowd, what with greater interest at home and more traveling fans pitching up. However, unless the players can be persuaded to play on the same wages or new players can be found, then costs go up too. Just as a matter of interest, have the Board modelled a budget based on promotion, given that’s where we’re headed?

Here’s a modest proposal. A meeting, to be attended by those who care about the club in which the Board present their budgets for the 2011-12 season; one for the Southern League, one for BSS. I believe that if fans knew what was needed to meet those budgets, our interest would increase. I’d like to be inspired. I’d like to know the difference in income between a 300 gate and 400 gate. What difference does the increase make to bar sales, programmes sales, shops sales and so on. I’d like to feel that if we had some targets, we might want to get organised to reach it.

Of course, for all I know, the bank balance is nicely in the black and the promised overage will fund the stadium of our dreams. It’d be nice to know either way.

I’m sure that many will grind their teeth at what they perceive as the negativity of this posting. And true enough, I’m unlikely to be mistaken for Bobby McFerrin as he whoops his way through “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” but I don’t mind too much about that.
We’ve two years to get sorted. Two years to build our fan base, to make meaningful links with our wider community, to encourage sponsors and advertisers. Not long, really.

But as Mr Micawber also said: “Something will turn up.” Mustn’t grumble, eh?