If you’ve ever found yourself wondering where all the money is going in your business, you need to change your approach to spending. Working out a business budget is sometimes confusing and can be boring, but it’s one of those administrative tasks you have to take care of if you want your company to succeed.
Start planning and visualizing your company’s budget with these free 5 Free Business Budget Templates for Better Cash Flow:
- Small business budget template from Capterra – With sheets for monthly and yearly planning and actual monthly income and expenses, this Excel template is a helpful tool for monitoring progress toward your business goals. Use the overview report to compare the difference between projections and actuals.
- Project Budget from XL template – This template is convenient for businesses dealing in contract work. Use it to calculate and estimate expenses from the design phase through implementation and monitor ongoing expenses for management of finished projects.
- Cash Flow Budget from PDFConverter – If you just need a basic template to show you where money is coming from and where it’s going, this straightforward Excel sheet fits the bill. It doesn’t take long to fill out and provides a good visual tool for cash flow management.
- Marketing Plan Budget from PDFConverter – Step up your marketing game using this Excel template with spaces for every aspect of a robust marketing plan. Make projections and update with actual expenses to get a better idea of how much it really costs to bring in more customers.
- SCORE’s Financial Projection Workbook – Get a more detailed look at your budget as your business grows using this multi-sheet Excel workbook. It includes pages for your balance sheet, financial ratio, break even analysis and more, allowing you to project and track expenses and income over a period of several years.
Not sure how to get started? A free business budget template is a useful tool for everything from estimating startup expenses to working out long-term projections. Here’s how budgeting with templates can help you reach your business goals.
Why Is Budgeting Important to an Organization?
No business can afford to operate without an understanding of the balance between the money going out and coming in. Poor cash flow management is the reason 82 percent of small businesses fail; they simply run out of money because nobody knows if expenses are exceeding income until it’s too late.
Budgeting puts cash flow and expenses down on paper and clearly shows how much is available for spending at any given time. With a budget, it’s much easier to track your company’s spending habits and made adjustments. Using a template for small business budget planning prevents even the smallest expenses from falling through the cracks so that you can minimize debt, improve cash flow and prepare your business for growth.
Benefits of Business Budget Planning Templates
It’s a challenge to go from no budget to a detailed plan. Templates make the transition easier by providing an outline with categories for expenses and income. Plugging your numbers into categories reveals where you’re currently spending the most and alerts you to where spending habits need to be reined in.
A basic business budget example includes categories for both fixed and variable costs and can be customized for the specific needs of any industry. Fixed costs are the easiest to calculate because they remain the same every month, such as rent, insurance, loan payments and software subscriptions. Variable costs, including inventory, employee commissions and utilities, change over time, and putting them in your budget allows you to track trends and make better projections for the future.
Templates also include calculation tools to minimize errors. Totals appear automatically as you put your expenses and income into the template, and you can use the information to calculate a minimum viable budget. This is the absolute least amount you need to continue operating and makes a good baseline for growth projections. From there, you can use templates to set goals for each department and the business as a whole. Because templates lay out your budget in a clear and concise format, it’s easy to communicate and enforce spending limits for employees and departments as they work toward their goals.
When you need to make a purchase that your cash flow simply can’t cover, a business budget template shows whether a business loan is a viable solution. You can get a quote for the type of loan you need, put the estimated payments in your template and see if your current income is enough to cover the debt without getting overwhelmed.
Services to Help with Business Budget Planning
Working out a budget is part of a smart accounting strategy, which also includes accurate bookkeeping. Daily tracking of income and expenses, along with reviewing reports on a regular basis, keeps you focused and alerts you to potential cash flow problems right away. If you’re having trouble staying on top of your records, bookkeeping services can help.
National Business Capital and Services provides a streamlined software solution with a dedicated accounting team to take the hassle out of accounting tasks and make managing your budget easier. Using software allows you to automate and outsource time-consuming administrative work, get your cash flow under control and build strong, more financially stable company.
Fill out our 1-minute application here or give us a call at (877) 482-3008 for more information.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Camberato is the CEO and Founder of National Business Capital. Beginning in 2007 out of a spare bedroom, Joe and his team have financed $2+ billion through more than 27,000 transactions for businesses nationwide. He’s made it his calling to deliver the educational and financial resources businesses need to thrive.