Spreadsheet for a children's home

elsien

PHK said:

flyer said:

PHK said:

flyer said:

elsien said:

Honestly, I’d be chucking this one back at the owner. If they want the manager to do a half decent job  then they need to provide the tools for you to do so. 

(Ex/care home manager here.)

I am the owner!

In which case, the software that you use to do your books will also have budgeting built in. 

We use Xero, which does have budget options but not in the way I need to use it. Let's say the manager has a budget of £400 per month for food. They go shopping twice a week, and she needs to be able to draw down the money she spends so she knows what she has left. Does that make sense?

That's an unusual way to do it.

Normally you set a cost per meal or serving. Doing it that way, it doesn't matter that some food will be bought in one month but eaten in another or that some packages are large enough to last multi months. 

We didn’t do it like that with a cost per meal. It was only a small place which might make a difference but the residents helped plan the menu and then we would just have a rough weekly budget - over  some weeks, under the next  and my job wad to make sure it balanced and tell staff to do cheaper shopping if they needed to. We didn’t use catering suppliers, we just shopped and budgeted  the same way a family of five or six would do.