This Free Small-Business Budget Template Will Take Your Bookkeeping to the Next Level

Our free small-business budget template will help you get your business budget in order

Imagine going into a month having no idea what you are going to spend or how much money you are going to make. Maybe you’ll set a new record for sales, or maybe you’re going to spend half your capital on new equipment, who knows?

If you’re interested in having money in your bank account at the end of the month, you might want to start thinking ahead.

Enter, The Budget.

The good news is that you don’t even need accounting software to make a useful budget for your small business. All you need is a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Even better news, we’ve already made a free small-business budget template for you.

How to use our free small-business budget template

Rather than making a budgeting spreadsheet yourself, just use this one that we made for Excel. Input your projected revenue and line-by-line expenses for the next year, and we’ll show you how those numbers should break down month to month so you can track how you’re doing throughout the year.

Entering projected annual revenue and expenses into the free small-business budget template

Projecting your month-to-month budget with the free small-business budget template

Then, once a month, put in your company’s actual results to track how you’re doing. The free budget template will show you where you’re hitting the mark, and where you’re veering off course.

Here’s what your small-business budget report will look like once you’ve entered the budgeted and actual data (if you’re running a ping pong ball business, that is)

By staying on top of how you’re doing at the end of every month, you can make informed decisions about your business—like when you can invest in more resources or when you need to cut back—to get the most out of each dollar and get more insight out of your accounting software.

Free budget template examples

Don’t run a ping pong ball business? No problem. Here are some other budget template examples to get your juices flowing.

• Here’s a coffee shop budget template from Fresh Cup Magazine
• Here are some budget templates for freelancers from BusinessLoad
• Here’s a restaurant budget template and guide from RestaurantOwner.com
• Here’s a budget template for photographers and videographers from Peerspace
• Here’s a real estate agent budget template and guide from McKissock
• Here’s a budget template for gyms and personal trainers from Personal Fitness Professional
• And here’s one from Gusto for startups in general

When a free small-business budget template isn’t enough

Trying to run a business without a budget is like trying to walk through a busy intersection with your eyes closed and your ears plugged. So download our free budgeting template, check your results from last year, last month, or last week, and go for it. You’re not going to be 100% on target, but that’s okay. The goal of a budget is to have a fixed point to track your progress against.

And when your business grows to include complexities such as foreign currency transactions, multiple channels of planning, or revenue and cost growth resembling kudzu, you need to invest in budgeting software. (We also can help you determine when that time has come, by the way.)

And for more tips to get your business finances in order, follow our finance and accounting blog.