Google Sheets Budget Template: Track Business Costs Online

A budget is a document that’s mainly used to break down the costs of executing a project or running the operations of a business for some time and define a maximum spending limit for the procurement of resources.

This free Google Sheets budget template will help you identify the different resources that are needed for your business to operate for a year, such as people, equipment or machinery. Then, you can estimate their costs and add them to determine how much money you’ll need to finance your business operations.

Then, once your project or business operations start, you can use your operating budget to compare your actual costs to the costs you had estimated to make sure your spending stays within the boundaries defined in your budget.

Google Sheets helps with collaboration but it isn’t a true project management software. Solely relying on templates puts your project at risk, and companies often need additional tools to help estimate costs and manage resources effectively. ProjectManager has powerful project budgeting tools that can help you create a budget by mapping out the tasks, projects and strategic initiatives that your organization intends to execute. Then you can use ProjectManager to track work and monitor costs as they occur.

Online templates can be helpful, but ProjectManager makes it easier to track budgets in our software. Learn more

Your Budget Template for Google Sheets

This budget template will help you estimate your business’ operational costs for a year. The best part is that you can customize the cost category fields to adjust them as needed. You can also use this budget template for a particular department within your organization, or even smaller teams.

To utilize this budget template for Google Sheets, simply click on the hyperlink or click on the image below. You’ll be taken to the template where you’ll need to make a copy of the template so you can edit it.

The template contains an example of how an IT department can use this free budget template for Google Sheets to track custom cost categories like personnel, hardware and software.

ProjectManager's Google Sheets budget template

Now, let’s learn what’s exactly included in this template, how it works and how you can customize it for your needs.

How to Use This Budget Template for Google Sheets

This Google Sheets Budget template is an easy-to-use tool that’ll help you better understand what your costs are and how they impact your business or project profitability. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use this resource.

Define Your Cost Categories: Use the gray rows in this column to name cost categories that apply to your business such as “fixed costs” and then list costs like salaries, rent or utility bills.
Quantity and Cost per Unit: This category only applies to physical resources such as the raw materials and supplies that you need to manufacture a product, which are usually measured in different units. For example, a construction business might need materials like wood, paint or cement. If you’re listing a different type of resource such as employees, leave these columns blank.
Estimated Cost: Here you can list the dollar amount of each cost you’ve previously identified. For material costs, you’ll need to multiply the cost per unit vs. the quantity.
Cost Recurrence: This column allows you to specify if the cost is a recurring expense. A recurring expense is simply a cost that needs to be paid regularly such as every month. As you plan your budget for the year, you’ll also find one-time costs that still need to be factored in, such as, for example, the purchase of new machinery for the production process.
Calendar: This template allows you to identify the costs for every month based on your one-time costs and recurring expenses. Simply copy the values from your estimated cost column in their corresponding month or months. If it’s a monthly cost, then paste the estimated cost value in all months, but if it’s a one-time cost, you’ll need to place its estimated cost in only one month column.
Total Annual Budget: This column shows the annual budget for your business based on all the costs you’ve entered. It also allows you to zoom into each cost category and see the amount of all your cost items per year.
Actual Cost: You can use this Google Sheets budget to compare your planned costs vs. actual costs as your project progresses. Simply add the actual cost to its respective column to determine whether your monthly costs are over or under your estimated budget.

Related Budgeting Templates for Google Sheets

We’ve created dozens of project management templates for Google Sheets, Word and Excel. Here are some of them that relate to the budgeting process.

Project Budget Template for Google Sheets

This project budget template allows you to break down your project into individual tasks and track the labor, materials and other types of costs for each of them. Then, estimate the cost of all your project tasks to create an estimated budget. This template also lets you compare planned vs. actual costs once your project starts.

Project budget template in ProjectManager

Action Plan Template for Google Sheets

This Google Sheets template allows you to create an action plan, list down tasks, assign them to your team members, set due dates, and track progress and costs. It’s a good tool for tracking costs as your team executes work so you don’t exceed your budget.

Resource Plan Template for Google Sheets

Resource planning is the process of assessing what are the necessary resources for the completion of a project. This template helps you understand what resources are needed for each task, what their estimated effort is and when they are needed.

ProjectManager Is Better Than a Budget Template for Google Sheets

While this Google Sheets budget template is a good starting point for tracking the costs of your business, it’ll only give you a general overview of your estimated annual budget. ProjectManager has much more advanced tools to track the actual costs of your everyday business activities and projects. Here are some key features.

Robust Cost Management and Budgeting Tools

Map out project tasks, allocate resources, track costs and create project budgets using various project management tools such as Gantt charts, dashboards, workload charts and timesheets. ProjectManager’s project views such as its Gantt charts and kanban boards help you zoom into the costs that your business generates as employees execute tasks and projects.

Light mode Gantt chart in ProjectManager

Compare Planned vs. Actual Costs

Simply estimate the cost and duration of tasks, map them in a timeline and assign them to your team members. Then once they’re completed, you can compare the actual costs of your tasks and projects against the estimated costs to determine whether you’re over or under budget.

Monitor Your Budget With Real-Time Dashboards

ProjectManager has real-time dashboards that show how your projects and tasks are progressing, their costs, how workload is being distributed among your team and more. They’re ideal for a quick overview of the status of your budget, so you can diagnose any issues soon.