Make Sure You Budget Properly for FF&E

Opening a sports facility, complex, or recreation center is a huge undertaking. All angles need to be considered, especially the financial aspect. No matter what reason you’re in business, the money needs to make sense, and you have to be profitable to survive. That’s precisely why budgets exist. They make sure that everything comes out right on the financial side of things. Of course, that’s dependent on if you follow them. When opening a sports facility, you’ll need a variety of budgets set up. One budget you’ll have to have is an FF&E budget. FF&E is such an important part of your business, so you want to make sure you create this budget carefully and that you follow it. Today in the Sports Facilities Advisory blog, we discuss budgeting for your FF&E in further detail.

Get a Template

The easiest way to start your budget is to create a template that has all the necessary criteria outlined. A comprehensive template will help you fill in the data when necessary, and give you a good idea of what your final figures, expenses, and other factors will be. If you don’t have a ton of experience with FF&E budgeting, it can be helpful to look at some best practices and examples of what has worked for other facilities.

Use Your Feasibility Study

Before you reached the point where you were ready to start creating budgets for things like FF&E, you’ve hopefully done feasibility studies to make sure building and operating a facility in the area is even viable. These studies have plenty of valuable information that you can use at the budgeting stage. For instance, your feasibility studies would have revealed the size of the venue you’ll be building, so this will give you a good idea of how much you’ll need in order to meet the volume of people using equipment at any given time. You also would have found out the need you’ll be filling. If the location you’re building in lacks basketball and volleyball facilities, you’ll need FF&E for these sports. These are just a few examples of how a feasibility study can help you create a realistic, solid budget for your furniture, fixtures, and equipment.

Stick to the FF&E Budget

Now that you have a general idea of how to create your FF&E budget, make sure you stick to it. It can be easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of finally ordering these things to fill your facility. Buying the top of the line items when something else would do can easily put you over budget. Or maybe you end up buying things your facility doesn’t really need. There are plenty of ways to wander off course, so it’s important to focus on the original plan and only make adjustments if it’s necessary or it makes financial sense.

Contact Sports Facilities Advisory

If you’re looking to open a sports facility, let the experts at Sports Facilities Advisory help. We can do you feasibility studies, budgets, and more so you don’t have to. Just taking a look at our client portfolio shows how dedicated we are to opening quality, successful facilities. For more information, contact us today.