As of September 30, our fiscal year 2015 finished. Our finance team and auditors are almost finished with adjustments and tax calculations. I think that everyone is aware that we had a challenging year. Financially, we are breaking even. While being reason for concern, the real story is complex. Each product grouping experiences its unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We have taken on bold new strategies to pursue these opportunities with considerable investment costs. At the same time, we have encountered unforeseen threats and unexpected challenges. On December 16, I will provide more detail on where we are heading. Here are just a few highlights.
Revenues are up 3.7% to $126MM but fell short of our forecast of $135MM. The primary causes of short revenue are delays in Brentwood India getting off the ground, a significant drop in Brentwood Europe sales due to a sluggish European economy, and overstated forecasts in a number of areas, even as SPG reaches record revenues and Brentwood Asia continues to do well. Since our budget is built on a forecast, a shortage in revenue means that not only do we forego the profits associated with the missing sales, we also forego the overhead absorption. In others words, for the smaller sales that we do generate, our overhead costs are higher. Seeing this trend mid-year, we sought to reduce discretionary spending and remove some positions from the organization largely by not replacing retirees. We also saw that more investment and financial support was necessary to integrate the Integrity Plastics acquisition than was initially planned.
We have also incurred an exceptional number of unplanned one-time financial impacts associated with some positive and some negative events. On the positive side, we jumped on the chance to buy the 825 Morgantown Road facility, incurring moving expenses that added to the already heavy Integrity Plastics integration costs. Also, we were able to collect $467K of old, written-off customer debt thanks to some diligent work by Lori Ohlinger. On the negative side, we have incurred an exceptional amount of legal expense associated with HR and product liability issues. Although the legal issues resulted in generally good outcomes, they have been a resource drain and distraction for many people. We carried forward an additional $391K of outside commissions from the prior year due to an accounting error. Also, we learned at the year-end audit that there was a tax calculation error in FY2012 relating to how we accrue for future tax liabilities that caused us to take an additional $735K hit. In summary, too many negatives conspired against us all at once.
So where do we go from here? First, we have to move forward with a more conservative financial plan based on a more certain revenue projection. Therefore, we have revised the initial forecast for FY2016 down to $135MM. Secondly, growth without profits is not good. Therefore, we need to size budgets such that we will not dip below a minimum profitability level, one that I have set to be 5% for FY2016. As it stands today, we are still adjusting budgets to achieve this 5%. This outcome assumes that Brentwood India becomes operational and hits its year one sales goal; that Brentwood Europe rebounds closer to its prior year sales level; that SPG continues its turnaround trend now four years running; and that revenue and margin forecasts are achieved.
Importantly, there is considerable upside potential if the revenue forecast is exceeded and we focus on managing costs. With lower oil and gas prices, we should experience material cost reductions. We need to rethink our manufacturing and business processes to find more ways to be cost efficient. We are going to make considerable changes to how we use Syteline so that it is better able to help us manage our profit centers as independent businesses and manage the performance of our cost centers.
We are at a critical time where we are incurring a lot of change internally to meet current and future structural needs. At the same time, there is some instability and heightened competition in markets that we have traditionally relied on to fund our new ventures. Adapting to this new reality will force us to be much more careful in how we spend discretionary dollars. Our budgets will be tighter. We will spend where it is necessary to meet revenue projections, for strategic initiatives that we need to see through, and for cost reductions where the benefit comes very soon. All of this will ensure that we have the strength not only to withstand the negatives if they occur, but also to achieve continued growth.
I hope you understand that with no profits come no MIPs nor bonuses. The new LEAD system will result in changes to pay rates effective with the first pay in January. Let's commit ourselves to meeting our goals for FY2016 and returning to profitability.