“If you want creativity, take a zero off your budget. If you want sustainability, take off two zeros.” [Jaime Lerner]

Abstract

This is a simple budget planning and control table.

Enter into cells B5:E5 your departments' annual budget.

In cells G7:J18 should be the corresponding seasonal weights for each department. As an example please see festive articles (Easter and Christmas) as well as summer articles. The purchase department will have corresponding costs 2 months in advance.

The general formula =(B$5-SUM(B$6:B6))*G7/SUM(G7:G$19) in cell B7 you copy into B7:F18 for a start. Please note that rows 6 and 19 need to be kept empty for a reason.

During the year you will overwrite these plan values by actuals. The remaining budget will adapt accordingly to keep the initial budget values.

As soon as you see that the remaining values are no longer realistic for a department, you should overwrite all of them with reasonable = realistic values, and you could add a difference analysis.

Note: You can also break down a budget piece-wise linearly with Linear Breakdown but I deem this budget control with seasonal weights superior.

Download

Please read my Disclaimer.

budget_control.xlsx [16 KB Excel file, open and use at your own risk]