Are you frustrated by the yearly ordeal of creating a budget for your organization? Do you find that your budget often doesn't empower you to meet your organization's strategic goals? You can improve the budgeting process by using a balanced scorecard. This performance-management technique helps you measure key business objectives that balance financial measures of past performance with measures that indicate likely future performance, such as customer, employee, and process metrics.

Balanced scorecards measure company performance in broad areas, known as perspectives. Company executives and managers link each perspective with one or more key performance indicators (KPIs). Each of these short statements defines a measurable action and aligns with one or more of the company's goals. Linking KPIs to specific budget requests helps managers see how money is allocated to achieve a company's strategic goals.

Use the following information and tools to incorporate the balanced scorecard methodology into your budgeting process.

• Improve budgeting using balanced scorecards (Article)
  Use balanced scorecards to lessen the pain of the yearly budgeting process.
• Use key performance indicators for effective budgeting (Article)
  Creating effective key performance indicators is one of the most important tasks that managers can do this year to create success in future years.
• Balanced scorecard (Template)
  Track and measure business objectives against key financial, customer, employee, and process metrics.