As a business owner, keeping track of expenses can be a burden. You need to document every detail to make sure you are sticking to your spending limits while promoting your products or services, keeping promises, and developing new offerings.
A business budget worksheet can help you stay organized.
Having a template to work with can cut the time it takes to jot down the details of a budget, help you prioritize projects and allocate resources to get them done, and show trends in spending versus spending achieved results.
Depending on the complexity of your business, you may need to monitor a number of individual budgets while managing overall spending. The following business budget worksheets range from specific templates – from product marketing to website redesign – to comprehensive templates that cover every aspect of your marketing plan.
Let’s dive in so you can control your budget like never before.
How to write a business budget
1. Use budget templates
Building a business budget from scratch can be overwhelming – you need to grasp the details of the forecast budget, actual expenses, and the cumulative total of each and every month.
If you’ve never done a business budget or are looking for a specific marketing worksheet, you can go with. kick off Marketing budget templates from HubSpot. This download includes eight well-designed and detailed templates to easily manage your finances with options for Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. A brief overview explains how to use each template so you can easily enter your own information.
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2. Establish your strategy and goals
To get the most out of your budget, you need to know what goals you want to achieve and what strategy you have for achieving them. If you are working on getting more sales (one goal) and you want to improve your website to get leads (the strategy), you need to invest funds in the redesign project.
Look at this strategic planning models This can help you determine your long-term goals when your business is just getting started. That way, your budget will reflect the financial resources you will need to achieve your goals.
3. Collect the numbers
Every company has different needs, so no budget is exactly the same. For example, a branding and creative budget has very different line items than a website redesign budget.
No matter what budget you put together, you need all the relevant expenses for a comprehensive overview. Here are the basic numbers you might want to add:
- Sales forecasts: Take into account your historical financial performance and projected growth income.
- Fixed cost forecasts: The costs that don’t change (i.e., employee compensation, office rent, business software, insurance, and utilities).
- Variable cost forecasts: The cost, which can change from month to month (i.e. overtime pay, delivery costs, or software that varies based on usage).
- Annual project costs: The cumulative cost of realizing all of your business goals for the year.
- Individual project costs: The costs associated with each project that should be tracked in individual budget worksheets.
- Target profit margin: A metric that shows how much money a company makes. Knowing your bottom line – and adding it to your budget – is a helpful reminder of what you want to achieve over the year and a good benchmark when analyzing your monthly financial trends.
Depending on your budget, you can also include cash, inventories, accounts receivable, net fixed assets, or long-term debt.
How to manage a business budget
No budget is an island. All businesses are affected by poorly managed budgets, especially a small business that is just getting started.
If your budget is only part of the puzzle, you will likely need to get it approved by a manager or executive team before spending any money. When running a business alone or with a small team, it is wise to find a trusted colleague or financial professional to check your numbers. They may be able to point out areas where costs can be reduced, funds reallocated, or greater profit margins achieved.
Do you want to make sure you are on the right track? Think how much you should set aside for a Advertising budget, advertising budget that corresponds to your goals.
Once your budget is established, it’s no longer enough to review it once a year – you need to review it (at least) monthly to make sure your spending isn’t getting out of hand. Once you’ve set your annual budget, check it out at the beginning and end of each month. If you want to stay tuned, you can even schedule a mid-month review to check that everything is on the right track.
When a new project comes up, just add it to your existing business budget worksheet and make adjustments to the total spend. The same is true if you drop a project. The company’s priorities are constantly changing, and your budget must adapt to the changes.
Small Business Business Budget Worksheets
You have sifted through past financial records, made forecasts for the future, planned your upcoming projects, and have all the information you need to create a well-rounded budget. Now is the time to choose the best business budget worksheet for your goals. Fortunately, all of these options make it easy to keep track of your finances.
HubSpot Marketing Budget Templates
If you need a worksheet for any marketing niche, HubSpot has you covered. One download gives you access to eight budget templates: Master Marketing Sheet, Product Marketing, Content, Paid Promotion, Public Relations, Branding and Creative, Website Redesign, and Events.
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Small business budget templates
Simplicity is the theme of these Smartsheet business budget worksheets. Each Excel template is free to download, with options for multiple products, business expenses, startups, and more.
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Business expense template
Do you need a polished business spending budget? Microsoft Office gives you an overview of the costs for employees, marketing, office space, travel and training with this well-designed Excel template. Just fill in the fields and submit it for approval.
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Annual budget template
For a simple look at how your income and expenses are changing from year to year, this Quickbooks Excel template is all you need.
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Budget templates for freelancers
Working for yourself often means combining personal and business expenses. For this reason, these Excel templates from Business Load contain income forecasts in addition to personal costs. You can even budget your contribution to taxes, 401,000, and emergency funds on one sheet of paper – you probably have more than enough to manage.
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Sample business budget worksheet
Personally, I’d rather endure the monotony of writing lines than spend all day organizing numbers in an empty table. But having an example to work on makes it easier to make sure everything is on the right track. If you share this mindset, here is a completed sample business budget worksheet to get you started.
The example shows the budget needed for a website redesign project, with each expense categorized to keep it organized and easy to read. You can see where the budget has been exceeded (UX tests) and where savings have been made (CMS software).
Setting up your own business budget using these templates is so quick and easy that you’ll have your numbers organized in no time. The sooner you start, the better your budget (and business) will be in the months and years to come.