You’ve set your financial goals for 2027. Now it’s time to start building the budget that will help you achieve them.
And the logical place to start is revenue.
Most business owners have an idea of how much they’d like their revenue to grow next year. Maybe your goal is 5%, 10% or even 20%.
But there’s an important difference between a revenue goal and a revenue plan.
A goal says where you want to go.
A revenue plan answers the bigger question:
How are you actually going to get there?
Don’t Just Add a Percentage to Last Year
One of the easiest ways to create a revenue budget is to take this year’s revenue and add a growth percentage.
If your business generates $1 million this year and you want to grow 10%, you budget $1.1 million for next year.
Simple.
But what will create that additional $100,000?
Unless you can answer that question, you don’t really have a revenue plan yet.
Instead of starting with one big annual number, look at the individual services that generate your revenue and consider what could realistically change next year.
For a pet care business, that might mean lodging, daycare, grooming, training, enrichment, memberships, retail or other services.
Each has different opportunities—and different limitations.
Start With What Your Business Is Doing Today
Before looking forward, look back.
Review your current revenue by service and consider what’s been happening over the past 12 months.
Ask yourself:
- Which services are growing?
- Which are flat or declining?
- Where do you regularly reach capacity?
- Where is unused capacity available?
- Have client buying patterns changed?
- Have you added or discontinued services?
- Did pricing changes affect revenue?
- Were there unusual circumstances this year that shouldn’t be repeated in next year’s assumptions?
This gives you a much stronger starting point than simply using your total annual revenue.
Your historical results aren’t automatically your future—but they give you valuable information for building realistic assumptions.
Identify Where Your Growth Will Come From
Once you understand your starting point, identify the specific opportunities that could generate additional revenue.
Most revenue growth comes from some combination of a few key areas.
- Pricing
Are you planning a price adjustment next year?
If so, estimate when it will take effect and how much additional revenue it could generate.
Remember that a 5% price increase doesn’t necessarily mean annual revenue will increase by a full 5% if the new pricing doesn’t begin until partway through the year.
Timing matters.
- Serving More Pets
Could you increase the number of pets using an existing service?
Perhaps your daycare has room to increase average daily attendance, your groomers have appointment openings or your lodging occupancy could improve outside of peak periods.
Look at your available capacity and decide how much additional volume is realistic.
Growth should be based on what your facility and team can actually deliver—not just what you’d like to sell.
- Improving Your Service Mix
Not all revenue growth has to come from serving more pets.
Could existing clients purchase additional services?
Enrichment activities, upgraded lodging options, grooming add-ons, training, memberships or other complementary services may provide opportunities to increase revenue per pet.
Small changes in purchasing behavior across a large client base can add up.
- Adding Something New
Maybe 2027 includes a new service, expanded capacity, additional groomer, trainer or other growth initiative.
Include that revenue—but build it realistically.
A new service rarely operates at full capacity on day one. Consider when it will launch and how quickly you expect demand to grow.
Capacity Matters More Than Many Owners Realize
This is where ambitious revenue goals sometimes run into reality.
Imagine your lodging business was nearly full during every major holiday this year.
Can you budget 15% more lodging revenue next year?
Maybe—but simply attracting more holiday reservations won’t get you there if you don’t have additional space to sell.
You may need to find the growth somewhere else: stronger occupancy during non-peak periods, higher pricing, additional services purchased by lodging clients or increased capacity.
The same principle applies to daycare, grooming and training.
Before budgeting substantial volume growth, ask:
Do we have the capacity to deliver it?
And capacity isn’t just physical space.
It can also be limited by staffing, labor efficiency, operating hours, equipment or management capacity.
A good revenue plan recognizes those constraints.
Build Revenue Month by Month
Pet care businesses are seasonal, which makes a flat monthly revenue budget particularly unhelpful.
December lodging revenue probably shouldn’t look like September. Summer demand may look very different from February. Grooming, training and daycare can each have their own seasonal patterns.
Use your historical monthly results to identify those patterns and then layer your 2027 assumptions onto them.
If you’re planning a price increase in March, reflect it beginning in March.
If you’re adding a groomer in June, don’t budget their revenue in January.
If a major holiday falls differently on the calendar next year, consider how that might affect demand.
The more your revenue budget reflects how your business actually operates, the more useful it becomes throughout the year.
Give Every Growth Dollar a Reason
As you work through your revenue plan, try this simple test:
For every meaningful increase in budgeted revenue, you should be able to explain why you believe it will happen.
Instead of:
“We’re budgeting 12% revenue growth.”
You want to be able to say:
“We’re budgeting 12% growth based on our March pricing adjustment, increased weekday lodging occupancy, adding a groomer in June and higher enrichment participation.”
Now you have assumptions you can monitor.
If revenue begins falling behind budget, you can determine which assumption isn’t happening as planned and decide what action to take.
That’s far more useful than simply knowing you’re $20,000 behind a yearly revenue target.
Does Your Revenue Plan Support Your Financial Goals?
Once you’ve built your revenue plan, return to the three financial goals you established for 2027.
Does your projected revenue give you enough room to achieve your target profit percentage?
Can it support your owner pay goal?
Does achieving the revenue require additional staff, marketing or other investments that need to be reflected elsewhere in your budget?
Your revenue plan is only the first piece.
Next, we’ll step away from the spreadsheet for a week and look at another important part of annual planning: building your 2027 business calendar.
Then we’ll return to the budget and tackle the expense that deserves especially careful planning in a pet care business—payroll.
Ready to Build Your 2027 Revenue Plan?
You don’t need to start with a blank spreadsheet.
The Crystal Canine Budget Builder Toolkit is designed to help pet care business owners turn their goals and assumptions into a practical financial plan.
Use the revenue planning tools to build your budget by service and month, think through your growth assumptions and create a plan you can compare to actual results throughout the year.
Then continue building your budget with payroll and expense planning so you can see whether the entire financial plan supports your goals.
Start building your 2027 financial game plan with the Budget Builder Toolkit.