A free Excel budget template for companies: build next year's operating budget from units, prices, headcount and cost-center lines, phase it by month with a seasonal row, and compare it with actuals. It is a business budget, not a household one.
Free Excel workbook, no sign-up. The formulas are live, and sample rows show how it fills in: replace them with your own.
Download business-budget-template.xlsx
| Line | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Full year | % of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $930,600 | $1,015,200 | $1,099,800 | $1,184,400 | $4,230,000 | 100.0% |
| Cost of goods sold | $428,076 | $466,992 | $505,908 | $544,824 | $1,945,800 | 46.0% |
| Gross profit | $502,524 | $548,208 | $593,892 | $639,576 | $2,284,200 | 54.0% |
| Gross margin % | 54.0% | 54.0% | 54.0% | 54.0% | 54.0% | |
| People cost | $353,800 | $353,800 | $353,800 | $353,800 | $1,415,200 | 33.5% |
| Rent and facilities | $45,000 | $45,000 | $45,000 | $45,000 | $180,000 | 4.3% |
| Software | $24,000 | $24,000 | $24,000 | $24,000 | $96,000 | 2.3% |
| Marketing | $33,000 | $36,000 | $39,000 | $42,000 | $150,000 | 3.5% |
| Travel | $15,000 | $15,000 | $15,000 | $15,000 | $60,000 | 1.4% |
| Professional fees | $13,500 | $13,500 | $13,500 | $13,500 | $54,000 | 1.3% |
| Total operating expenses | $484,300 | $487,300 | $490,300 | $493,300 | $1,955,200 | 46.2% |
| Operating profit | $18,224 | $60,908 | $103,592 | $146,276 | $329,000 | 7.8% |
| Operating margin % | 2.0% | 6.0% | 9.4% | 12.4% | 7.8% |
This is a company operating budget: next fiscal year's revenue, cost of sales, people cost and operating expenses, built from the numbers a finance lead or budget holder actually decides on. It is for business use only. It is not a personal or household budget.
Every figure comes from a driver. Revenue is units times price. People cost is headcount times salary plus burden. Other costs are an annual amount per cost center and account. Change a driver and the whole budget moves with it, so the conversation with each budget owner is about units, prices and heads, not about a total that was typed in.
B3, a list of products and services with annual units, price and COGS %, and a phasing row of twelve monthly weights (F15:Q15) that must add up to 100%.Flat or Seasonal.B2, and read the variance.The formulas are SUMIFS, INDEX, IF and COUNTIFS only, so the file works in Excel 2016 and 2019 as well as Microsoft 365.
Each product's annual revenue is units times price. Each month takes its share from the phasing row:
Revenue!F5: =$E5*Assumptions!F$15 (E5 = units x price)
Do not divide the year by twelve if sales are seasonal. Build the weights from last year's monthly share of sales, or from a seasonal index over several years; how to calculate a sales seasonality index in Excel shows the method. Excel's forecast sheet can also detect seasonality in a monthly history if you want a second opinion on the pattern.
COGS is a percentage of each product's revenue, not a fixed amount, so the budget margin moves when the revenue driver moves:
Revenue!F13: =F5*$D5
People cost is headcount times salary times one plus the burden rate, divided by twelve, and only from the role's start month. Row 3 of the People sheet holds the month numbers 1 to 12:
People!F5: =IF(F$3>=$E5,$C5*$D5*(1+Assumptions!$B$3)/12,0)
The burden rate covers what the employer pays on top of salary: health insurance, retirement contributions such as a 401(k) match, and employer payroll taxes. The IRS lists the employer's share of Social Security and Medicare taxes and federal unemployment (FUTA) tax as employer costs. The template's 22% is illustrative. For scale, the BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release puts benefits at 30.0% of private-industry employer compensation costs in June 2026; that measure includes paid leave and legally required benefits, so set your own rate from your payroll and benefits invoices.
A role that starts in month seven gets six months of cost, not twelve.
Rent and facilities, software, marketing, travel and professional fees go on the Costs sheet, one row per cost center and account. Flat spreads the annual amount evenly; Seasonal follows the phasing row:
Costs!F5: =IF($D5="Seasonal",$C5*Assumptions!F$15,$C5/12)
The Summary picks each account up across all cost centers with SUMIFS:
Summary!B36: =SUMIFS(Costs!F$5:F$24,Costs!$B$5:$B$24,$A36)
The sample company sells two products and a service. Product A is 18,000 units at $95 ($1,710,000), Product B 6,000 units at $240 ($1,440,000) and Services 1,500 days at $720 ($1,080,000), $4,230,000 in all. The phasing row gives 22%, 24%, 26% and 28% by quarter. COGS is 46% of revenue. There are 20 staff at an average $58,000 with a 22% burden, all in post from January ($1,415,200). Other operating costs are $540,000.
| Line (USD) | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Full year | % of revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 930,600 | 1,015,200 | 1,099,800 | 1,184,400 | 4,230,000 | 100.0% |
| Cost of goods sold | 428,076 | 466,992 | 505,908 | 544,824 | 1,945,800 | 46.0% |
| Gross profit | 502,524 | 548,208 | 593,892 | 639,576 | 2,284,200 | 54.0% |
| People cost | 353,800 | 353,800 | 353,800 | 353,800 | 1,415,200 | 33.5% |
| Rent and facilities | 45,000 | 45,000 | 45,000 | 45,000 | 180,000 | 4.3% |
| Software | 24,000 | 24,000 | 24,000 | 24,000 | 96,000 | 2.3% |
| Marketing (seasonal) | 33,000 | 36,000 | 39,000 | 42,000 | 150,000 | 3.5% |
| Travel | 15,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 60,000 | 1.4% |
| Professional fees | 13,500 | 13,500 | 13,500 | 13,500 | 54,000 | 1.3% |
| Total operating expenses | 484,300 | 487,300 | 490,300 | 493,300 | 1,955,200 | 46.2% |
| Operating profit | 18,224 | 60,908 | 103,592 | 146,276 | 329,000 | 7.8% |
Budgeted operating profit is $2,284,200 − $1,955,200 = $329,000, a 7.8% operating margin. Because people and most overheads are flat while revenue is seasonal, the margin runs from 2.0% in Q1 to 12.4% in Q4. That shape is the budget, not a problem; a flat phasing would hide it.
The Summary sheet carries five checks, and each must show 0:
=ROUND(SUM(Assumptions!F15:Q15)-1,6).=ROUND(R5-E5,2), and the Summary counts the rows that are not zero.These are the tie-out habits from five checks before you trust a spreadsheet total, applied to a budget.
Paste each month's actuals into the table at the bottom of the BvA sheet, mapped to the same lines as the budget. Type the month number in B2. Each line shows budget, actual, variance (actual − budget), variance % and a flag:
=IF(E5=0,"-",IF(B5="Cost",IF(E5<0,"F","U"),IF(E5>0,"F","U")))
On cost lines the sign reverses: spending more than budget is unfavorable (U). The sample January shows why variance % needs care: January is a light month, so its budgeted operating profit is a small loss and the percentage on that line is huge. Read the amounts first. For a full monthly report with a flexed budget, year to date, cost-center views and commentary, use the budget vs actual template.
One workbook handles one company, a few dozen cost-center lines and one owner. It strains when twenty budget owners send back their own copies, when reforecasts pile up next to the budget, and when the question each month is not what the variance is but why. Once the budget exists, Covirage joins it to the ledger, headcount and purchase-order exports, and its tools build the cost bridge: headcount, rate, volume, timing and one-time items, summing to the variance. The external AI model drafts the commentary from those computed lines and never does the arithmetic. See cost variance analysis: budget in, actuals in, and see which costs moved and why, line by line. To build the lines from zero instead of from last year, see zero-based budgeting, and for how the budget differs from a reforecast, see budget vs forecast.
Revenue by product or channel, cost of sales, people cost by team, other operating costs by cost center, and the resulting operating profit, each phased by month. Many companies add capital expenditure and a cash view on separate sheets.
The budget is the plan agreed before the year starts and is usually fixed. A forecast is the current best estimate of the outcome, updated during the year. Actuals are compared with both: the budget for accountability, the forecast for what to expect.
Top-down starts from a target set by leadership; bottom-up adds up each budget holder's drivers. Most companies do both and reconcile the gap, which is why driver-based templates help: the gap shows up as specific units, prices or heads.
Use last year's monthly share of the annual total, or a seasonal index from several years, rather than dividing by twelve. Keep the weights in one row that sums to 100% so every line phases the same way unless it has its own pattern.