fe ature ◗ MARC COUSINEAU
Redrawing the Bottom Line Un élément essentiel à revérifier Superintendents are starting to revolutionize the way they budget ◗ Veteran superintendent Bill Fach spent many hours in university learning about agronomy and class after class studying the complexities of turfgrass to prepare him for his time on the golf course. But after all these lessons, he still says the most important time spent in university was learning how to budget. “When I was in university, we had a course about budgeting for a project. My project was running a golf course. So I put down on paper what tasks I would need to do to run a golf course, using people, not money. Everyone thought it was the stupidest course, but when I got out and working, I thought that it was one of the best courses I ever had at the university.” Fach, the superintendent at Black Bear Ridge in Belleville, Ontario, is not alone in believing sound money management is one, if not the most, important tool in a golf course superintendent’s toolbox. As management and golfers raises expectations, while at the same time lowering budgets, superintendents have had to adapt. The result has been new and 12 greenMaster | www.golfsupers.com
innovative budgeting systems that make financial planning more efficient. This has led to the development of task-based budgeting methods being heralded by superintendents across Canada. Fach compares this task-based approach of budgeting to building a house. “You’d have to dig the foundation first and then fill the foundation and so on, so you do a task every day to build the house,” says Fach. “I do the same thing for the golf course. I take all the tasks we need to do on the course and I assign each one of these tasks a person and a certain number of hours to do this task.” Fach uses Microsoft Project Manager to turn these tasks into dollar signs. By inputting all the resources and costs needed to complete the activity, such as wages, fuel for vehicles and machines and any products or tools used, he comes up with a price. Fach uses this example to explain the system; It takes one staff member, paid $10.50 an hour, six hours to spray greens with a chemical that costs $86 per application. The employee has to spray the greens eight times a year and uses two litres of gas every time they spray, which costs $2. After inputting all these numbers into Project Manager, a superintendent can figure out that the cost of spraying greens for an entire year would be $1,288.
Greg Austin, the superintendent at Revelstoke Golf Club in Revelstoke, B.C., has a similar outlook on budgeting. Every year, Austin looks to break down his budget into tasks and assign costs to every resource used for those tasks. “Instead of just a broad scope of how much money we’re going to spend in a certain month, I look at what each activity is going to cost right down to the amount of fuel used and the depreciation on a specific vehicle,” explains Austin. While Austin uses a slightly different system than Fach, Excel spreadsheets instead of Project Manager, the approaches are similar; something Austin says is all about spending efficiently. “The goal, ultimately, is to maximize efficiency,” says Austin, “mainly because we are a non-profit society and every dollar has to be stretched and spent as wisely as possible.” Creating a detailed budget means having pages of financial information available at your fingertips. This information has several benefits for superintendents. Jeff Stauffer, the superintendent at Credit Valley G & CC in Mississauga, Ontario, says showing a firm grasp of financials and budgeting can go a long way with club management and members. ◗ continued ON page 14