Budgeting

It’s been quite a while since I put together a plan for replacing computers based on their depreciation cycle. But that’s how I spent part of my day today: chasing down inventories and filling in blanks, so that we can draw up a schedule and a budget.
This isn’t a necessity but the FCCJ budget review is coming up in December and it would be smart to have a rational strategy rather than guessing how many things might break next year.
So I’m taking it upon myself to detail and review our equipment–about 100 workstations, servers and peripherals. Yoshida-san, the IT manager, and Mr. Yoda, the general manager, are helping me to gather all the necessary data. I’ll analyze it, find out replacement costs, and make some recommendations for a five year plan to cycle through all of the hardware.
Although accounting’s not my favorite task, I enjoy making plans. I get to exercise my brain in a different way and it’s sort of fun, in a bean-counting way.