Five Steps to Manage Finances in Youth Sports
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TeamSnap shares five steps to help manage finances and money in your youth sports program or business.
Budgeting and financial planning is one of a youth sports administrator’s most important daily tasks. We’re all trying to manage finances with one clear goal in mind: allow more opportunities for youth to enjoy sports in our local communities.
In the first edition of our financial management blog series, we covered the tasks needed to create a perfect youth sports budget. Now, we’ll turn our attention to other helpful advice in managing your program’s finances. With these tips, you’ll be better equipped to break even and secure profits, expand the growth of your program to more youth in your local community, stop the painstaking process of tracking down unfulfilled payments, and much more.
Below are five easy steps to manage your youth sports finances like a pro.
How to Manage Finances in Youth Sports
Create a Budget Plan That Covers Everything
The first step to sound financial management in youth sports is to create a budget. Your budget should provide a clear picture of your budgetary goals, outline, questions, and concerns before kicking off a new season (or starting a new program in your community).
In our recent blog, we covered the five areas to consider when creating a new budget plan. This included:
- Identify Your Goals and Objectives
- Estimate the Expenses to Run Your Organization
- Forecast Your Revenue
- Create a Plan to Manage This
- Remember to Monitor and Adjust
The budget plan you create is your ultimate guide to financial management. Get a clear picture of your operating expenses and exactly how much revenue you’ll need to bring in (through registration fees, etc.) to break even or create a profit. Read more details for each of the above sections in this blog post.
Find Software to Monitor and Track All Payments and Expenses
We touched upon this in our budget plan, but it’s worth mentioning again. The best way to keep your budget plan on track and up to date is through the use of an expense/payment tracker. Gone are the days of calculating both of these numbers with pen and paper and hand-written receipts. In today’s digital world, your sports club or league has numerous options for a software solution.
We’ll cover some of the best apps and tools available to manage finances, but we recommend finding a software solution that syncs up directly with your other program management tools, especially registration. Registration will be your biggest revenue driver and it’s important to track every payment from new families entering your organization every season. On TeamSnap for Business, you can track all of these payments and even have the flexibility to offer payment plans and other creative ways to collect payments for families looking for options.
Consider Fundraising and Sponsorships
Fundraising and sponsorships are another vital piece of youth sports financial management. Both cash-raising options are great for driving down the rising costs of youth sports. You can use this new infusion of cash to cut registration fees, provide new equipment, pay for facilities, fund scholarships, or send teams to post-season tournaments.
With TeamSnap Sponsorship, we’ll make the process of finding, vetting, verifying, executing, and reporting the value of your sponsorships easy. Our team of sponsorship experts helps every step of the way. TeamSnap Sponsorship is the only service that connects you with sponsors who provide direct payments to offset the cost of running your programs. Our sponsorships team will help you match with sponsors but also fulfill sponsorship requirements like printing banners or shipping sponsored practice jerseys.
Create a Plan for Cash Payments
As discussed by Jason Schaitz of Community Rec magazine, youth sports organizations should have a clearly defined plan for cash payments. Most of the payments you drive in will be processed digitally, but sometimes, families need to pay in cash.
How can we ensure these payments are tracked correctly and not lost, sitting as a cash or check on your office desk? Jason recommends putting one person in your organization in charge of these payments. You should also lay out specific guidelines for how you’ll track, process, and report on cash payments in your software solution, your organization’s bank accounts, and your reporting tools.
Develop an Emergency Fund
As with any sound budgetary planning, youth sports organizations should make sure they consider all contingency or emergency plans. You don’t want to get caught missing a facility payment or struggling to pay your roster of officials because registration numbers didn’t go as planned, or the equipment was more expensive than anticipated.
One suggestion might be to raise a specific fee (next season’s registration) by just 1 or 2%. Add that excess amount to an emergency fund. As Jason Schaitz of Community Rec magazine points out, some of that excess funding could be used for a new scholarship or improvements to a facility.
Apps that help Someone to Manage Finances
TeamSnap for Business is the #1 option for youth sports financial tracking. Why? Because the platform is integrated directly with your other season management tools, namely registration. Our season financial reporting gives you access to a full snapshot of all payments, deposits, and outstanding payments. Plus, see a full view of finances for your organization with cross-program reporting.
Some other options to consider:
- QuickBooks
- Mint
- PocketGuard
