Time for 2017 Budgets

With the end of 2016 almost upon us, it’s a great time to start planning for 2017, and that means making budgets. Budgeting, especially for seed and early stage startups, is more about outlining the costs to execute a plan and defining a not-to-exceed number as things are fluid and change rapidly with new information.

For budgeting, I like a simple Google Spreadsheet (see this budget example) as follows:

• One tab for XYZ Budget Detail and one tab for XYZ Budget Summary
• One column for each month “Budget” and one column for each month “Actual” followed by the corresponding quarter “Budget” and “Actual”
• A concluding column for the year “Budget” and the year “Actual”
• In the “Detail” sheet, a line item for each thing in the category followed by a summary row for the category
• In the “Summary” sheet, a line item for each category summary followed by a row total for the month, quarter, and year

Here’s an example budget Google Sheet that works well for a department and can be copied and customized.

Budgets aren’t the most fun project but are an important part of a startup when scaling the organization.

What else? What are some more thoughts on budgeting?