10 Steps to Long-Term Financial Planning.

Beyond the annual budget cycle and multi-year capital plan, governments need to identify long-term financial trends. Long-term financial planning involves projecting revenues, expenses, and key factors that have a financial impact on the organization. Understanding long-term trends and potential risk factors that may impact overall financial sustainability allows the finance officer to proactively address these issues. A long-term financial planning process allows decision-makers to focus on long-term objectives, encourages strategic thinking, and promotes overall awareness for financial literacy in an organization.

Long-term financial planning relates to strategic planning, financial policy development, capital improvement planning, and budgeting, but it is inherently different, as our 10 steps show.

1 Establish and organizational vision for finance to guide decision making (financial policy development)

2 Work to achieve organizational alignment and integration of financial planning in other key planning processes (master planning, strategic planning)

3 Forecast long-term revenue and long-term expenses (capital improvement planning...