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Free Project Budget Templates: Simple to Advanced

By Andy Marker | February 25, 2022

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We’ve compiled the most useful free project budget templates for project managers, professional services teams, accountants, and other project budget stakeholders. 

Included on this page, you’ll find a simple project budget template , a construction project budget template , a sample project proposal budget template , and a multiple project budget Gantt chart template , as well as a list of helpful tips for completing a project budget template.

Simple Project Budget Template

Download Simple Project Budget Template Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word | Google Sheets  

Use this simple project budget template to plan and track all required tasks, resources, and the associated costs. Simply enter project tasks, subtasks, status, start and end dates, as well as labor and materials costs. You can enter fixed costs and compare budgeted and actual amounts. 

The Balance column reflects each task’s under/over amount, and the built-in subtotal line tallies all task balances to give you the big picture of your project’s financial outlook. Use this customizable template to define and track any expenses your project incurs, and to ensure that you successfully complete your project within budget. 

Find additional project proposal templates and learn more about getting the most out of your project-budget proposals.

Project Management Budget Template

Download Project Management Budget Template Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs  

Use this template to stay on top of your project budget and ensure that you, your team, and all other project stakeholders have easy access to the project’s financial details. This advanced project budgeting template offers space for you to define your project’s purpose, reporting requirements, spending limit authorization levels, cost variance action plan, cost estimation process, cost baseline, work breakdown structure (WBS), cost control and metrics, change control process, and total project budget. This detailed template helps you monitor your estimated and actual budget amounts in order to successfully launch and manage the project.

Construction Project Budget Template

Download Construction Project Budget Template  Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets

Use this construction project budget template to break down construction task costs by general requirements, site prep, on-site water or sewer, utilities, excavation and earthwork, foundation, rough framing, electrical, and all the other construction stages. Enter labor costs for each task or subtask hours and rate) and materials (quantity and cost) to determine your project’s budgeted and actual amount, and by how much you’re over or under budget. Customize this template to reflect your unique construction project tasks and needs. 

Read our guide on construction budgeting to find more construction-budgeting resources, and to ensure that you hit your budget goals.

Project Proposal Budget Template

Download Project Proposal Budget Template Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets

Use this comprehensive project proposal budget to account for the costs of every task in your proposed budget. For each task, enter a unique WBS, a description, status, planned and actual start dates, targeted end date, labor and materials costs, and budgeted amount. Then, enter the actual amount spent to complete each task, and view the under/over amount and make any necessary adjustments. Use this tool to anticipate the differences between your proposed and actual budget, and to adapt accordingly.

Project Budget Control Template

Download Project Budget Control Template — Microsoft Excel

Keep an accurate budgeting record and tight control of project-related spending with this unique project budget control template. Enter line-by-line tasks and subtask costs, and the template will automatically calculate subtotals to reflect whether your individual components — as well as the project as a whole — are over or under budget. You can use this simple project budget control template to control costs for a single project, related projects, original project budget figure comparison, or multiple projects.

Project Budget Definition Spreadsheet

Download Project Budget Definition Spreadsheet Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets  

In order to create a successful project-specific budget, you need a customizable blueprint to account for all of the components. Use this project budget definition template to list a project’s profit and loss (P&L) components, including revenue, cost of goods sold (COGS), labor costs, and more. Under Balance Sheet Category , list cash (budgeted, actual, and variance), inventory, net fixed assets, long-term debt, and other financial factors. The template provides you with a month-by-month, quarter-by-quarter, and annual insight into your project’s planned or implemented budget.

Sample Project Proposal Budget Template

Download Sample Project Proposal Budget Template Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets

Take the guesswork out of creating a project proposal budget with this sample template. The template includes sample text that guides you through the project budget creation process, along with sample labor, materials, and fixed costs; it also prompts you to assign individual task statuses, labor costs, proposed start and end dates. Use the pre-filled, editable task and subtask line-item amounts to determine whether you’re over or under your proposed budget, and how you might adjust to ensure that your proposed project comes in under budget.

Project Expense Tracking Template

Download Project Expense Tracking Template Microsoft Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

Use this project expense tracking template to ensure that you proactively account for all of your project expenses, so that any shortfalls don’t risk your project’s success. This template includes customizable budget-component categories, auto-tallying materials and labor sections, space to note budgeted versus actual amount for each budget component, and the over/under amount. Propose and track the expenses for each individual task, and keep an eye on how each of these variables affect your project’s bottom line. 

Read our project cost templates article to find additional templates and learn more about getting the most out of your project budgeting.

Multiple Project Budget Gantt Chart Template

Download Multiple Project Budget Tracking Template — Excel

Manage multiple projects at once with this Gantt chart template, which provides a project budget that’s unique for each individual. Guide team members and project sponsors through your financial details with this dynamic template, which includes example text and a visually rich Gantt chart that lists your projects’ over/under figures. Compare project-by-project budgets, or adjust figures for an individual project to ensure that you’ve adequately budgeted for your proposed project and are prepared for successful execution.

Project Budget Breakdown Template

Download Project Budget Breakdown Template  Microsoft Excel | Adobe PDF | Google Sheets  

Keep tabs on your project’s proposed versus actual budget with this easy-to-use project budget breakdown template. This fully customizable template enables you to accurately estimate the cost of each project category, review category subtotals, and then compare the total budgeted amount with your allotted budget.

What Is a Project Budget Template?

A project budget template is a tool that project managers use to estimate, implement, and gauge projected versus actual project costs. Use a template to track the project budget at the tasks level and identify your budget projections. 

A project budget template takes the guesswork out of budgeting for projects, so that you have an accurate financial picture of all project-related costs and can identify how the costs of every project facet affect the big picture of your allotted budget. A project budget template can also alert you when tasks run over budget, so that you can adjust costs or other expenditures to stay within project budget. 

A project budget template provides insight into the accuracy of anticipated expenditures and revenue sources so that you can use the template to justify any project-related cost adjustments to successfully execute the project. 

A strong project proposal template will typically include the following sections to account for all of your proposed expenses: 

• Actual: Enter the actual cost of each budgeted task.
• Budget: Review the budgeted amount for each individual task.  
• Category: Enter category names for each task series or each subtask for your project’s budget. 
• Fixed Amounts: Enter the fixed costs for each task. 
• Labor: Enter each budgeted task’s projected hours and hourly rate.
• Materials: Enter task units, cost per unit, travel-related costs, and costs per piece of equipment or required office or work space. 
• Project Title: Enter a title for the project and the projected and implemented tasks plan to track. 
• Subtotal: Review the combined under/over amounts to determine your subtotal and assess whether your project is within budget.
• Task: Enter each budgeted task, a WBS number, a description, status (e.g., not started, in progress, completed), anticipated and actual start dates, and a proposed end date. 
• Under/Over: Review each task’s under/over amount to determine any discrepancies between budgeted and actual task amount, and make adjustments accordingly.

Streamline Budgeting with Smartsheet for Project Management

From simple task management and project planning to complex resource and portfolio management, Smartsheet helps you improve collaboration and increase work velocity -- empowering you to get more done. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover a better way to streamline workflows and eliminate silos for good.

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• How to create (and stick with) a projec ...

How to create (and stick with) a project budget

A project budget is more than just money—it’s also a spending plan that guides you through the ideation, execution, and delivery of your project. When you master the art of budgeting, you can ensure your team has the resources they need to deliver quality results. In this article, we guide you through the budget creation process and offer tips to set your project up for success.

If your project was a car, a budget would be its fuel. Just like a truck needs gas in its tank, projects need money and resources to keep them going. And as a project manager, you have the power to plan and use those resources in the most effective way—so your project gets to its required destination on time, without running out of gas. 

Because a project budget is essential to move work forward, knowing how to create and follow a solid budget plan is one of the most important project management skills you can develop over the course of your career. 

What is a project budget? 

Budgeting before you begin your project helps you scope work and control costs . It’s also a good way to pitch your project to stakeholders and get the funds you need, because a detailed spending plan helps approvers understand how costs contribute to your objectives. And as your project progresses, you can use your project budget as a baseline to compare actual spend to budgeted spend and mitigate extra costs as they arise. 

9 steps to create a project budget

Creating a project budget may seem daunting, but you can do it by following a sequence of steps. We’ve laid out each part of the budgeting process below. 

1. Set project objectives

Project objectives are what you plan to achieve by the end of your project. They’re a good place to start because they help you understand where work is headed, and act as a north star while you iron out the rest of your project plan . 

The best objectives are clearly defined and falsifiable, so you can use them as a benchmark to measure success once your project is finished. To write clear objectives, use the SMART methodology. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. For example, if you were trying to boost visitors to your website, you might set this objective: “By the end of this quarter, increase organic traffic to the website homepage by 10%.” 

2. Define project scope

Once you’ve set your objectives, you can determine the scope of work you’ll need to achieve those goals. Your project scope sets boundaries for your project, such as what work you’ll do—or not do—and what deadlines and deliverables you’re working towards. When defining your project scope, consider the following: 

Available resources: Before you determine the specific deliverables you want to target, take stock of the resources available to you. If you’re working with a hard budget cap or limited project team bandwidth, you may need to adjust your deliverables accordingly. As such, it’s useful to be aware of any limitations before you dive into the details of deliverables and required resources (which we’ll get to in later steps). 

Time restrictions : Is there a time crunch for this project, or can you take as long as you need? A tight project schedule can influence the cost of resources. For example, you may need to pay freelancers a rush rate if you’re working with a tight deadline. 

Non-goals : What’s outside the project scope? It can be helpful to identify what you’re not trying to achieve, so you can avoid scope creep and potential overspending. 

Remember that your project scope is all about setting boundaries. It helps you understand what you want to achieve, what type of work you’ll do, and what deliverables you’re working towards.

3. Break deliverables into sub-dependencies

Next up, list out all the deliverables that fall within your project scope and break them down into sub-dependencies. For example, imagine that one of your project deliverables is to publish a blog post. You might break it down into the following line items: 

Create design images

Stage in Wordpress

Share on social media

This method helps you include any hidden project expenses when you create your budget. For example, if you just tried to estimate the budget for publishing a blog post as a whole, you’d be more likely to omit extra costs—such as the hourly rate for a freelance editor, or the price of paid social posts. 

If you prefer diagrams over lists, try creating a work breakdown structure (WBS) . This visual tool breaks down work into multiple levels, starting with your main objective at the top and branching out into deliverables and sub-dependencies below. 

4. List required resources

Now that you’ve laid out all of your deliverables and sub-dependencies, it’s time to list the resources required for each item. Be as specific as possible, and remember that “resource” can mean more than just staff or equipment—it may also include indirect costs like training or a physical space to work in. 

To get you started, here are some common project cost categories to consider: 

Team members : Who are you relying on to do the work? Make a note if they’re salaried in-house staff, or if you need to hire additional hourly contractors.

Procurement : What do you need to do to acquire external resources? For example, you may need a team member to research the best products to use, communicate with sales reps, and purchase a tool.  

Training : Do team members need time or resources to get up to speed? Think of the time needed for staff to train new employees or courses required to learn new skills. 

Equipment : What tools are required? This can include things like extra computer monitors, design software, or even internet service. 

Space : Where is your team going to work? For example, consider if you’ll require meeting rooms or desk space for new team members, 

Research : What data do you need? Think if you’ll rely on information like user research studies, web analytics, or polling. 

Professional services : Do you need to hire external experts, like legal or marketing consultants? 

Travel : Does your team need transportation, lodging, or an allowance for on-the-go meals? 

5. Estimate amounts

Ultimately, a budget is an estimate of costs. But while we can’t predict the future, there are a few methods to help you make the most accurate estimates possible. And you don’t have to stick to just one—you can use a combination of these approaches, depending on your unique project circumstances. 

Here are a few of the estimation techniques you can use:

Estimate and sum the cost of each individual piece 

Often called a bottom-up estimate, this is the best approach if you know exactly what deliverables and sub-dependencies will comprise your current project. If you’ve created a work breakdown structure , you’re already set up nicely to use this method.

To cover your bases, you can also compare your cost estimates with another one of these methods—for example, you could note how the budget was spent for a similar project in the past.  

Work backwards from a fixed amount 

In this approach, you start with a fixed budget amount and break it up into deliverables or project milestones . While working backwards can get a bit hairy—especially if you don’t already know how much project deliverables might cost—it can be helpful if you need to determine what objectives you’re able to achieve with a limited budget. 

If you need to use this method, try combining it with another one of these options. For example, once you determine what you’re able to achieve, take a bottom-up approach to ensure you’re not missing any critical pieces. 

Compare budgets from similar projects

Previous projects are a gold mine of historical data, because they’re a real-life record of where spend stayed on (or off) track. As such, they can help you see costs you might have overlooked, or how unexpected circumstances might influence spend. If possible, see if you can review lessons learned from a similar project in the past. 

Consider different scenarios

Estimation can be hard for complex projects with a wide range of potential outcomes. For example, if you’re planning an outdoor event in April, costs may vary depending on the weather—you might need tents or fans to mitigate unexpected heat, heaters if it’s too cold, or an indoor venue if it rains. 

In this case, it’s useful to estimate spend for each of these scenarios. Depending on your budget flexibility, you can play it safe and plan for the most expensive scenario. Or, you could calculate expected spend for the worst, best, and most likely outcome—then take the average of all three. 

6. Set aside a contingency fund

Sometimes, the unexpected happens. Tools break, schedules change, and once-in-a-century pandemics make things a bit harder. Or, you might uncover an unexpected opportunity during your project—like the chance to purchase a business asset at a reduced cost. Contingency reserves give your budget extra padding when plans change. The typical recommendation is to set aside 5-10% of your total budget for contingencies. 

Budgeting is a process of estimation, so you should always include a contingency fund. And if you’ve created a 100% accurate budget and don’t end up needing that extra padding, you can bolster your company’s bottom line with the leftover funds. 

7. Build your budget

At this point you’ve identified all of your project’s deliverables, allocated resources , and estimated costs. Now, it’s time for the fun part—creating your actual budget document. Here are some key components to include: 

Line items for each deliverable, sub-deliverable, and required resource—plus the expected cost of each. 

A timeline of when you’ll need each resource, and when you expect to spend funds. 

The person responsible for each budget component. For example, you might note that your assistant editor is responsible for tracking freelancer hours and invoices. 

Clear documentation of which part of the company budget you’ll pull from for each line item. For example, you may use the marketing department budget to create video ads, and the IT department budget for computer upgrades. 

A total of expenditures for your entire project. If applicable, include individual totals for each department budget you’ll be using. 

A place to track actual costs vs. budgeted costs once your project kicks off. 

Project budgeting tools

Selecting the right project budgeting tool is important, too. Make sure the program you choose has functionality to automatically total dollar amounts, so you don’t have to manually recalculate every time you need to adjust a line item. Also, your chosen tool should let you easily share and update your budget in real time, so you can make sure all team members are working with the most current version. 

There are lots of options to choose from, including basic excel spreadsheets and more robust project management software . Not surprisingly, we’re partial to Asana because it lets you input and total line items, build custom fields, assign owners, and easily share information with teammates. And aside from your actual budget, you can iterate on past workflows , create process documents , and save project budget templates to ensure you’re not missing any steps.

8. Make a plan to monitor spend

A budget is only good as long as you stick to it. Plan in advance how often you’ll keep tabs on actual costs vs. budgeted costs, so you can mitigate potential issues before they get too big. You can also decide up-front what you’ll do if you go over (or under) budget.

The benefit of a tool like Asana is that it lets you share, manage, and track your budget in real time. For example, Asana’s Universal Reporting feature automatically pulls data from your projects and displays spend, task status, and completed milestones in one place—so you don’t have to dig to figure out if you’re on track or not. 

9. Get approval from key stakeholders 

Now that you have your project budget plan in hand, it’s time to share it with project stakeholders and ask for sign-off. Thankfully, the detailed plan you’ve made should give approvers a crystal clear picture of how each individual line item will contribute to your project objectives. 

Example of a project budget

Let’s say you’re updating the checkout flow for your mobile app, and your project objective is to decrease average checkout time by 25% in Q3. To achieve that goal, you’ve scoped two priority deliverables and laid out the resources required. 

Here’s a simple example of what your project budget might look like. Note that you’ve included the timeline, owner, and estimated cost for each. You’ve also indicated which department budget you’ll use for each line item, and added columns to track budget approval and actual spend. 

Spend smart with project budgets

A well-crafted budget helps you through the entire project lifecycle—including planning, approval, and execution. Once you’ve mastered the skill of budgeting, you can ensure your project team has the resources they need to conquer key objectives and deliver quality results. And when you set up a process to stay on track with spend, you can tackle unexpected costs as they arise, build trust with budget approvers, and set a solid track record of successful projects. 

Want to learn more about project management? Here are 25 essential project management skills you need to succeed .

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10 Free Project Budget Templates in Excel and ClickUp

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

Creating project budgets from scratch? My favorite! Said no project manager ever. 😅

How many times have you dealt with inaccurate project cost estimates? Unless you’ve been using project budget templates from the get-go, you know the feeling of watching expenses creep ever further past your projected total cost. 

Your budget should be easy to manage, customize, understand, and update—even when you need to account for unexpected cost overrun and adjust.

That’s where project budget templates come in! 🌻

They can’t do all the work for you, but a simple project budget template can be a game changer. Once you have a good outline, you can focus on determining project expenses and creating a reliable budget plan.

We rounded up 10 free project budget templates for Excel and ClickUp, so all you need to do is pick a winner. 

What to look for in a project budget template

1. clickup project budget template with wbs, 2. clickup simple budget template, 3. clickup marketing budget template, 4. clickup business budget template, 5. clickup event budget template, 6. clickup budget proposal template, 7. clickup budget report template, 8. excel project budget template by projectmanager, 9. excel monthly budget template, 10. excel detailed project budget template by vertex42.

What Is a Project Budget Template?

A project budgeting template provides a structure to plan and track all the costs for a project. By estimating the total costs of the tasks and resources required for your project’s life cycle, you can accomplish your goal on budget (and on time). 

Project budget templates keep the budgeting process easy and organized, giving you features like:

• Exportable, downloadable spreadsheets for easy sharing and updates
• Visual representations of your budget and expense categories
• Easy-to-follow budget worksheets for tracking and estimating expenses and material costs

The best templates will help you optimize resource allocation , track expenses, identify areas where you can save, and create realistic goals.

Project management budget templates can also offer time-tracking capabilities, dependency warnings, priority labels, custom statuses, and task assignments to keep your project running smoothly.

You want the best tools and templates to make successful project plans a reality. After all, they’re supposed to simplify the life of a project manager, not complicate it. 

Here are some things to look for in simple project budget templates:

• Affordable: Small businesses need to put their money into projects, which means finding free budget templates and spreadsheet software 💸
• Straightforward: You and your team members should be able to get an at-a-glance view of your budget
• Customizable : Every project is different, and you’ll likely need to create a few custom fields 
• Dynamic: Project budgets are living documents that you’ll need to update in real-time
• Shareable: Collaboration is key! You should be able to share your budget with stakeholders, team members, and anyone else involved

Above all else, you want a project budget template that works for you. Managing project budgets is hard enough without working around unwieldy templates that don’t do what you need.

10 Free Project Budget Templates 2024

We’ve highlighted a wide range of project budget templates, and they’re all free. So grab a drink, kick up your feet, and get ready to meet the template of your dreams.

Are you preparing for a complex project? If so, ClickUp’s Project Budget with WBS template is a dream come true. ✨

Use this project management budget template to create a detailed work breakdown structure and chunk your project into manageable components. It’s designed to help you track project spending, organize your project data, and map out cost estimates.

Project managers can use this template to ensure every dollar is accounted for. And it’s simple to use whether you’re starting a new project or taking the reins on an existing one.

ClickUp is one of the best OKR software tools on the market, so you’ll have access to a ton of additional project management features. We’ve got you covered with everything from collaboration tools to remote team management to simple budget proposal templates .

If you’re looking for a straightforward project budget spreadsheet, the ClickUp Simple Budget Template is where it’s at.

This template will help you organize your finances, find your project’s baseline, create accurate cost estimates, and track actual costs in real-time. Use custom statuses, fields, and views to keep everyone on the same page. And don’t worry; it’s so straightforward that it works as a personal budget template too.

It’s as simple as adding the template to your dashboard, inviting team members or guests, recording estimated and fixed costs, and keeping track of expenditures as you go.

Once you sign up, you can access all of ClickUp’s project management tools . Whether you want quick and easy Gantt charts or construction project management tools, you’ll have access to what you need to make it happen. ⚒️

Marketing budgets are integral to the success of today’s business, and the ClickUp Marketing Budget Template simplifies the process of planning and managing your marketing efforts.

Ensure your marketing dollars go to the right places, monitor your spending, and track your project controls and deliverables.

Use this free budget template to maximize your ROI, identify potential savings, and create a top-down view of your marketing activities and their costs. It can do everything from tracking progress against KPIs to calculating individual costs.

Stay on top of your project’s budget with the tools to set goals, review past performance, calculate your budget, allocate your funds, monitor progress, and make real-time adjustments. And do it all with the help of ClickUp Automations to eliminate some of the busy work for everyone involved.

The ClickUp Business Budget Template lets you simplify your project and create a budget with detailed breakdowns and handy project management tools. 🧰  

ClickUp’s finance project management software tools create a roadmap to success, giving you the automations and customization options you need every step of the way. It’s never been easier to identify areas for optimization, manage your cash flow, and track project performance.

This template is designed to centralize your business expenses and revenue to keep your project on track.

You’ll have access to ClickUp’s robust project management features too. So you can collaborate with your team throughout the project’s lifecycle, assign project tasks, and keep track of progress across the board.

If you’re organizing an event, take some of the weight off your shoulders with the ClickUp Event Budget Template .

Ensure your expenses and resources are properly managed whether you’re planning for a corporate gathering, conference, product launch, or trade show. This template will help you set goals and budgets, track expenses and labor costs, and analyze your estimated budget.

Most importantly, this will help ensure you deliver a successful event every time. 🤩

This free project budgeting template makes planning, managing, and tracking your event easy with custom statuses, fields, views, and project management tools. 

You’ll start by adding the template to your Free Forever ClickUp Workspace. From there, you can invite relevant members and take full advantage of this budget template from your start date to the big day and beyond.

If you’re creating a budget proposal, we don’t need to tell you how stressful it can be. But the ClickUp Budget Proposal Template can make it more manageable.

Ensure your finances are in order and easy to understand so it’s easier to convey the plan to your stakeholders. And have an accurate estimated cost, so your next meeting with them is about something other than going over budget.

This template has clear visuals to make it easy to create a top-down view of project costs and a defined roadmap from start to finish.

It’ll walk you through information gathering, timeline creation, cost calculation, creating your final budget proposal, and any necessary revisions to keep your information up to date. 📅

You’ll also have access to a ton of project management and finance tools, and every team member can have a custom dashboard. Use these tools to improve budget proposal tracking, project constraint management, collaboration, and project planning.

Budgeting is time-consuming. Do it faster with the ClickUp Budget Report Template .

Use this template to track progress against goals in real time, explain discrepancies between your planned and actual budget, and create a detailed overview of your past and present finances.

We created this template to give you control of your finances, whether you’re a small business or a sizable enterprise. It allows you to quickly organize, understand, and communicate your budget information, and it’s an excellent option for project budgeting.

It’ll help you gather data, create your budget report, enter the data, check for accuracy, and update your info in real time.

The Excel Project Budget Template will help you organize the financial details for your project with a simple layout.

It’s a Microsoft Excel template, so you can easily color-code your items, input formulas, and monitor your finances. Once you’ve taken advantage of this free download, you can immediately create your project budget and fill in the template’s fields.

Get at-a-glance visual confirmation when you’re in the red or staying on budget, and share the document with your team members to keep everyone on the same page.

You can use this free project budget template and all of ProjectManager’s extra tools for 30 days for the free trial period. After that, you can sign up for as little as $13/month.

Want a super-simple monthly budget with no frills? The Excel Monthly Budget template from Microsoft will do the trick. ✅

This customizable budget spreadsheet template displays your income or budget, the percentage of monthly income spent, and a summary of your expenses in one place. Check the current subtotals for each spending category in the Monthly Income and Expenses tabs for a more detailed look.

If you’re Excel-savvy, customizing this template beyond the expense summary and chart is simple, making it easy to manage complex projects with lots to keep track of.

Whether you’re creating a budget for a small business project or something bigger, this template has you covered. And it’s straightforward enough to use for personal budgeting!

If you want to create a detailed spreadsheet, the Excel Detailed Project Budget Template might be what you’re looking for. It’s free and compatible with Excel and Google Sheets, perfect for collaboration between team members.

Create a detailed project budget complete with a WBS for large and complex projects, a basic or monthly project budget to keep things simple, or both for a comprehensive look at your finances.

Vertex42 designed this template for use with various projects ranging from home remodeling to large IT projects, with everything in between. And you’ll find other free downloads for things like earned value management to round out your Excel sheets.

In addition to Vertex42’s free templates, you can pay for premium Excel and Google Sheets templates to get the solutions you need to scale your business.

Keep Your Project Budget in Check from Start to Finish

A successful project budget is crucial for success, and it requires careful expense planning, tracking, and monitoring. Project managers everywhere know how difficult it is to organize everything.

 With one of these free templates, you’ll create a realistic budget, identify risks, and adjust as needed to avoid overspending and delays. 

Whether you need a detailed or simple project budget template, find one that lets you prioritize expenses and make informed decisions when allocating your funds. You’ll have an easier time identifying cost-saving opportunities and communicating your plans to stakeholders in an easy-to-understand format.

ClickUp makes all this easier with browser, desktop, and app functionality, plus a suite of collaboration tools for teams of all sizes. We also have 1,000+ integrations with popular project management tools to bring all your work together in one dashboard. 

Users with ClickUp’s Free Forever plan get access to tons of templates, views, and customization options. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for ClickUp now! 🏃

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How to Make a Budget: Your Step-by-Step Guide

12 Min Read | Jan 4, 2024

Making a budget might seem overwhelming at first, but hear this: You can do it. How? By breaking down the process a bit. Because no one eats an elephant by swallowing it whole. (You go one bite at a time.) And no one leaps into budgeting like a pro. (You take it one step at a time.)

So, here we go—bite by bite, step by step. Here’s how to make a budget in five steps.

• List Your Income
• List Your Expenses
• Subtract Expenses From Income
• Track Your Transactions
• Make a New Budget Before the Month Begins

What Is a Budget?

Real quick though, let’s define the word  budget . A budget is just a plan. It’s not a restriction on spending—it’s a plan for what you’ll do with your money. It’s a plan   for what’s coming in and what’s going out.

When you learn how to make a budget—and do it every month—you’re giving your money purpose. You’re taking control. Goodbye, money anxiety. Hello, money goals.

Keep reading to see how to make it happen so you can make a budget that works for you.

How to Make a Budget in 5 Steps

No matter how you feel about budgeting right now, no matter what money goals you have, and no matter your income—you can make (and keep!) a budget in just five steps.

But first, decide if you’re making a budget on paper, with a spreadsheet, or in an app. (I know a  great app called EveryDollar . It’s what I use to budget—and it’s the best. Just saying.) Either way, it’s totally okay to start by writing out everything on a sheet of paper.

Pro tip:  Before you dive into the steps, open up your online bank account or grab your bank statements. That will give you the info you need as you start filling out numbers in your budget.

Step 1: List Your Income

Income  is any money you plan to get during that month—that means your normal paychecks and any  extra money coming your way  through a side hustle, garage sale, freelance work or anything like that.

You work weekends as a barista or babysitter? That’s income, and it goes in your budget. 

Create separate income budget lines for every paycheck you (and your spouse) get, plus anything extra coming in. (Note: You’re working with  net income  here, meaning what you bring in after taxes or anything else that’s taken out of your paycheck.) Here’s an example:

His Paycheck 1: $1,500 Her Paycheck 1: $1,500 His Paycheck 2: $1,500 Her Paycheck 2: $1,500 Side Hustle: $500

Total Income: $6,500

If you’ve got an  irregular income , take a look at what you’ve made the last few months and list the  lowest amount  as this month’s planned income budget line. You can adjust later in the month if you make more and add that extra money to your money goal or another budget line.

Step 2: List Your Expenses

Now that you’ve planned for the money coming in, you can plan for the money going out. It’s time to list your expenses! (Yep, this is when that bank account or statement gets super helpful.)

Pro tip:  When you’re making a budget, before you put in all the things you’ll pay for this month, set aside money for giving. I believe in putting 10% of your income here—it’s a great way to start your budget with a  spirit of generosity ! Next, budget for your savings goals, like  an emergency fund  (depending on your Baby Step, which I'll talk about more in a minute). You've got to pay yourself first before you pay everyone else!

What’s next?

Cover your Four Walls.  That’s food, utilities, shelter and transportation . Make a budget category for each of these and create budget lines underneath for your specific expenses.

Start budgeting with EveryDollar today!

Think of a budget category as a folder and the lines as the files inside it. Or the category is like a playlist, and the lines are like the songs. Or . . . okay, you get it.

Here’s what it might look like for you (but with your numbers, of course!):

Budget Category: Food Groceries: $700

Budget Category: Utilities Electricity: $130 Water: $60 Natural Gas: $40

Budget Category: Shelter/Housing Mortgage: $1,450 HOA Fees: $50

Budget Category: Transportation Gasoline: $180

Some of these are called  fixed expenses —aka the expenses that stay the same every month, like your rent or mortgage.

Other expenses change up, like groceries or gasoline. By the way, that grocery budget line is super hard to guess at first, so just start with a really good estimate based on your past spending. You’ll learn better what you actually need here in the months ahead.

Next, list all other monthly expenses.  Start with the essentials: I’m talking about insurance,  debt , childcare, etc. Then work in a miscellaneous line and any nonessentials like personal spending, fun money and entertainment.

Then use your online bank account or those bank statements to estimate what you plan to spend for everything.

Here’s a quick callout. If you’re working to save money,  get out of debt , or hit some other money goal, you’ll get there way quicker if you cut back on the nonessential spending.

If you don’t know what goal to focus on right now, check out the  7 Baby Steps . This plan breaks the most important money goals into easy-to-understand, actionable steps!

Make new budget categories for your new budget lines.  Of course, if you spend money eating out, you can just add a line called Restaurants under your food category—as long as you remember groceries are a necessity , but drive-thrus or fancy three-course meals out  are not .  

Step 3: Subtract Expenses From Income

Math time! (It won’t be too bad. But it is totally necessary. Let’s do this.)

Subtract all your expenses from your income. This number should equal zero, meaning you just made a zero-based budget.

This is key: A  zero-based budget  doesn’t mean you let your bank account reach zero. (Leave a little buffer in there of about $100–300.) It also doesn’t mean you blow all your money.

Zero-based budgeting just means you  give every dollar a job to do : spending, giving,  saving or paying off debt . It’s all accounted for and given a purpose. It’s the reason I love this method.

You work hard for your money, right? Well, it should work hard for you! Every. Single. Dollar.

Okay, though, what do you do if you subtract your expenses from your income—and you’ve got money left over?  Don’t leave it there.  You’ll end up mindlessly spending it on  coffees , convenience store candy, and those one-click deals of the day. Get those dollars to work by putting any “extra” money toward your current  money goal .

What if you end up with a negative number? It’ll be okay. You just need to  cut expenses  until your income minus your expenses equals zero. (Hint: Start with those eating-out and entertainment budget lines. If restaurants are your love language, this will hit hard, but you can’t spend more than you make. You’ve got this!)

If you’re still struggling to make ends meet, don’t forget the power of the  side hustle  or overtime. Just remember not to increase your spending when you increase your income. Your extra cash needs to cover your budgeted expenses.

Is the math stressing you out a little? Listen, let  EveryDollar  do that for you. Our free budgeting app is made for this zero-based budgeting stuff, and you won’t have to keep running back to the calculator to get it right.

Okay, so that’s it for  making  a budget. The next two steps are all about  sticking with it .

Step 4: Track Your Transactions (All Month Long)

Ready for one of the biggest secrets for how to budget—and do it really, really well? Good, because I don’t want to keep it a secret. Here it is: Track. Your. Transactions.

Every single one.

Putting the plan on paper, in your spreadsheet, or in your app is just a bunch of good intentions without this step. It’s like writing down a goal to run a marathon, making a training plan, lacing up your shoes . . . and flopping on the couch with a bag of donuts.

What am I even talking about?  Tracking your transactions  means you account for  everything  that happens with your money  all month long .

When you fill up the  gas tank , subtract that expense from transportation. When you pay the rent, subtract that expense from housing. When you buy a coffee on the way to the office, subtract that expense from your personal spending (or whatever budget line you made for the perk that helps you work).

Track your transactions regularly. That might be once a week. Or at the end of each day. Or it might mean you log a purchase before you leave the grocery store parking lot. Whatever works for you and gets every expense tracked.

As you’re tracking, make adjustments as you need to. Yes, really! This is your budget. You make it work for you. If the  electricity bill  comes in higher than you thought, just tweak another budget line to make up for it. If the water bill comes in lower, then celebrate and move that money over to your current money goal—or add it to a budget line that went over.

I can’t say enough good things about tracking your transactions. But to sum up, I love this budgeting step because it’s how you:

• Stay accountable  to your budget, yourself and your money goals. (Also your spouse, if you’re married! And remember EveryDollar? You two can share an account so you’re budgeting as a team!) No secrets. No pretending a purchase didn’t happen.
• Keep from overspending,  because as you enter expenses, you see what you have left in every budget line! Instantly, you’ll know what’s left so you don’t overspend.
• Stay on top of the budget.  Your budget is not a set-it-and-forget-it project. It’s not a slow cooker. When you track transactions, you get in your budget all the time, and you can make adjustments so you know where your money is going—all the time.
• Learn and adjust your spending habits  so you can get back on track with your goals and finally make them happen. One monthly budget at a time.

Step 5: Make a New Budget Before the Month Begins

While your budget shouldn’t change too much from month to month, the fact is, no two months are exactly the same. That’s why you create a new  budget every single month —before the month begins. Then you can stare down certain expenses and say, “You will  not  be a surprise to my bank account, thank you very much.”

When you’re ready to start your next budget, just copy over this month’s budget to the next, and then make changes for anything new that’s coming.

Here are some examples of month-specific expenses to prep for:

• Celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries:  Never forget those.
• Holidays:  Do you need decor, gifts or a feast at the ready?
• Seasonal purchases:  Don’t forget to budget for  back-to-school season , fall coffee-flavor releases, and your spring kickball league.
• Semiannual expenses:  Do you pay your auto insurance twice a year? Do you need an oil change next month?
• Annual expenses:  Is it time for your yearly eye exam? Do you need to  budget for your pet to get his shots at the vet?

Here’s one way to handle getting these changing expenses into your budget:

• Create a budget category called something like Month-Specific Stuff or Alternating Expenses or Discretionary (if you like huge words).
• Then add whatever lines you need for  that month  and delete the ones from  last month  you no longer need.

Where does the money come from? You can cut back spending somewhere else and move that money over to this category. Taking $5–20 from a couple budget lines really adds up. Literally. Or if you can, crank up your income for the month. (Time for an extra freelance gig!)

Hey, if this part sounds complicated or clunky, that’s because it can be at the beginning. It takes people about three months to really get the hang of budgeting, so give yourself some grace and keep working on it! The benefits of budgeting will far outweigh the effort.

Why Making a Budget Is So Important

What are the benefits? Why is it worth it? Because when you budget, you’re telling your money where to go—so you don’t have to wonder where it went. You’re showing your money who’s in charge. (You.)

Budgeting is how you make any money goals happen—it’s how you make progress with your finances! It puts you in control. It gives you permission to spend your money  your  way.

I could go on and on and on because I honestly believe making a budget—and living that budgeting life—is one of the most important decisions you’ll make with your finances.

How to Make a Budget With Confidence

That’s it! That’s how to make a budget—and why you should. So, now it’s time to do it! It’s time to get confident with your money.

But what about being confident with budgeting? Hey, let  EveryDollar  help! This free tool makes budgeting easier, which is always a win. Download EveryDollar. Budget every month. You got this!

Save more. Spend better. Budget confidently.

Get EveryDollar: the free app that makes creating—and keeping—a budget simple . (Yes, please.)

Did you find this article helpful? Share it!

About the author

Rachel Cruze

Rachel Cruze is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, financial expert, host of The Rachel Cruze Show, and co-host of Smart Money Happy Hour. Rachel writes and speaks on personal finance, budgeting, investing and money trends. As a co-host of The Ramsey Show, America’s second-largest talk radio show, Rachel reaches millions of weekly listeners with her personal finance advice. She’s appeared on Good Morning America and Fox News and been featured in TIME, REAL SIMPLE and Women’s Health, among others. Through her shows, books, syndicated columns and speaking events, Rachel shares fun, practical ways to take control of your money and create a life you love. Learn More.

How to Create a Zero-Based Budget

Zero-based budgeting is a method of budgeting where your income minus expenses equals zero. Follow these steps to make a zero-based budget each month.

How to Set Financial Goals: 6 Steps

Want to make more progress with your money? Setting the right financial goals is the first step!

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Budgeting 101: How to Budget Money

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If I have take-home pay of, say, $3,000 a month, how can I pay for housing, food, insurance, health care, debt repayment and fun without running out of money? That’s a lot to cover with a limited amount, and this is a zero-sum game.

The answer is to make a budget.

What is a budget? A budget is a plan for every dollar you have. It’s not magic, but it represents more financial freedom and a life with much less stress. Here’s how to set up and then manage your budget.

Get a custom financial plan and unlimited access to a Certified Financial Planner™

NerdWallet Advisory LLC

How to budget money

Calculate your monthly income, pick a budgeting method and monitor your progress.

Try the 50/30/20 rule as a simple budgeting framework.

Allow up to 50% of your income for needs, including debt minimums.

Leave 30% of your income for wants.

Commit 20% of your income to savings and debt repayment beyond minimums.

Track and manage your budget through regular check-ins.

Understand the budgeting process

Figure out your after-tax income : If you get a regular paycheck, the amount you receive is probably it, but if you have automatic deductions for a 401(k), savings, and health and life insurance, add those back in to give yourself a true picture of your savings and expenditures. If you have other types of income — perhaps you make money from side gigs — subtract anything that reduces it, such as taxes and business expenses.

Choose a budgeting plan: Any budget must cover all of your needs, some of your wants and — this is key — savings for emergencies and the future. Budgeting plan examples include the envelope system and the zero-based budget.

Track your progress: Record your spending or use online budgeting and savings tools .

Automate your savings: Automate as much as possible so the money you’ve allocated for a specific purpose gets there with minimal effort on your part. An accountability partner or online support group can help, so that you're held accountable for choices that blow the budget.

Practice budget management: Your income, expenses and priorities will change over time, so actively manage your budget by revisiting it regularly, perhaps once a quarter. If you're struggling to stick with your plan, try these budgeting tips .

Start by determining your take-home (net) income, then take a pulse on your current spending. Finally, apply the 50/30/20 budget principles : 50% toward needs, 30% toward wants and 20% toward savings and debt repayment.

The key to keeping a budget is to track your spending on a regular basis so you can get an accurate picture of where your money is going and where you’d like it to go instead. Here’s how to get started: 1. Check your account statements. 2. Categorize your expenses. 3. Keep your tracking consistent. 4. Explore other options. 5. Identify room for change. Free online spreadsheets and templates can make budgeting easier.

Start with a financial self-assessment. Once you know where you stand and what you hope to accomplish, pick a budgeting system that works for you. We recommend the 50/30/20 system, which splits your income across three major categories: 50% goes to necessities, 30% to wants and 20% to savings and debt repayment.

Start by determining your take-home (net) income, then take a pulse on your current spending. Finally, apply the 50/30/20

budget principles

: 50% toward needs, 30% toward wants and 20% toward savings and debt repayment.

The key to keeping a budget is to

track your spending

on a regular basis so you can get an accurate picture of where your money is going and where you’d like it to go instead. Here’s how to get started: 1. Check your account statements. 2. Categorize your expenses. 3. Keep your tracking consistent. 4. Explore other options. 5. Identify room for change. Free

online spreadsheets and templates

can make budgeting easier.

Start with a financial self-assessment. Once you know where you stand and what you hope to accomplish, pick a

budgeting system

that works for you. We recommend the 50/30/20 system, which splits your income across three major categories: 50% goes to necessities, 30% to wants and 20% to savings and debt repayment.

Try a simple budgeting plan

We recommend the popular 50/30/20 budget to maximize your money . In it, you spend roughly 50% of your after-tax dollars on necessities, including debt minimum payments. No more than 30% goes to wants, and at least 20% goes to savings and additional debt payments beyond minimums.

We like the simplicity of this plan. Over the long term, someone who follows these guidelines will have manageable debt, room to indulge occasionally, and savings to pay irregular or unexpected expenses and retire comfortably.

The 50/30/20 budget

Find out how this budgeting approach applies to your money.

Your 50/30/20 numbers:

Necessities

Savings and debt repayment

Do you know your “want” categories?

Become a NerdWallet member to track your monthly spending trends, including how much you're allocating to needs and wants.

Allow up to 50% of your income for needs

Your needs — about 50% of your after-tax income — should include:

Basic utilities.

Transportation.

Minimum loan and credit card payments. Anything beyond the minimum goes into the savings and debt repayment category.

Child care or other expenses you need so you can work.

If your absolute essentials overshoot the 50% mark, you may need to dip into the “wants” portion of your budget for a while. It’s not the end of the world, but you'll have to adjust your spending.

Even if your necessities fall under the 50% cap, revisiting these fixed expenses occasionally is smart. You may find a better cell phone plan , an opportunity to refinance your mortgage or an opportunity for less expensive car insurance . That leaves you more to work with elsewhere.

Leave 30% of your income for wants

Separating wants from needs can be difficult. In general, though, needs are essential for you to live and work. Typical wants include dinners out, gifts, travel and entertainment.

It’s not always easy to decide. Are restorative spa visits (including tips for a massage ) a want or a need? How about organic groceries? Decisions vary from person to person.

If you're eager to get out of debt as fast as you can, you may decide your wants can wait until you have some savings or your debts are under control. But your budget shouldn't be so austere that you can never buy anything just for fun.

Every budget needs wiggle room — maybe you forgot about an expense or one was bigger than you anticipated — and some money to spend as you wish. If there's no money for fun, you'll be less likely to stick with your budget.

Commit 20% of your income to savings and debt paydown

Use 20% of your after-tax income to put something away for the unexpected, save for the future and pay off debt balances (paying more than minimums). Make sure you think of the bigger financial picture; that may mean two-stepping between savings and debt repayment to accomplish your most pressing goals.

Many experts recommend you try to build up several months of bare-bones living expenses. We suggest you start with an emergency fund of at least $500 — enough to cover small emergencies and repairs — and build from there.

You can’t get out of debt without a way to avoid more debt every time something unexpected happens. And you’ll sleep better knowing you have a financial cushion.

Get the easy money first. For most people, that means tax-advantaged accounts such as a 401(k). If your employer offers a match, contribute at least enough to grab the maximum. It's free money.

Why do we make capturing an employer match a higher priority than debts? Because you won’t get another chance this big at free money, tax breaks and compound interest. Ultimately, you have a better shot at building wealth by getting in the habit of regular long-term savings.

You don’t get a second chance at capturing the power of compound interest . Every $1,000 you don’t put away when you’re in your 20s could be $20,000 less you have at retirement .

Once you’ve snagged a match on a 401(k), if available, go after the toxic debt in your life: high-interest credit card debt, personal and payday loans, title loans and rent-to-own payments. All carry interest rates so high that you end up repaying two or three times what you borrowed.

If either of the following situations applies to you, investigate options for debt relief , which can include bankruptcy or debt management plans :

You can't repay your unsecured debt — credit cards, medical bills, personal loans — within five years, even with drastic spending cuts.

Your total unsecured debt equals half or more of your gross income.

Once you’ve knocked off any toxic debt, the next task is to get yourself on track for retirement. Aim to save 15% of your gross income; that includes your company match, if there is one.

If you’re young, consider funding a Roth individual retirement account after you capture the company match. Once you hit the contribution limit on the IRA, return to your 401(k) and maximize your contribution there.

Regular contributions can help you build up three to six months' worth of essential living expenses — not your full budget, just the must-pay basics. You shouldn’t expect steady progress because emergencies happen, and that's when you should pull money from this fund. Just focus on replacing what you use and building higher over time.

These are payments beyond the minimum required to pay off your remaining debt .

If you’ve already paid off your most toxic debt, what’s left is probably lower-rate, often tax-deductible debt (such as your mortgage). Tackle these when the more-basic goals listed above are covered.

Any wiggle room you have here comes from the money available for wants or from saving on your necessities, not your emergency fund and retirement savings.

Congratulations! You’re in a great position — a really great position — if you’ve built an emergency fund, paid off toxic debt and are socking away 15% toward a retirement nest egg. You’ve built a habit of saving that gives you immense financial flexibility. Don’t give up now.

Consider saving for irregular expenses that aren’t emergencies, such as a new roof or your next car. Those expenses will come no matter what, and it’s better to save for them than borrow.

WATCH TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BUDGETING

» LEARN: Tips for Canadians on how to budget

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Project Budget Template

A vital part of project management is creating and managing an accurate budget. Use Vertex42's project budget template along with a well-defined project plan to help put together a solid budget - one that will allow you to accurately predict your costs and to manage those costs during your project.

This project budgeting template was designed for all sorts of projects. Use it for home remodeling, contract work, small community service projects, and even large IT project budgets. Unless you are doing a multi-year, multi-million dollar project, you probably don't need to invest in expensive or more complex project budgeting software. For tracking spending over time, see our earned value management template.

This Page (contents):

Detailed Project Budget (New)

Detailed project budget with wbs.

• Basic Project Budget
• Monthly Project Budget

Project Budgeting Tips

License : Private Use (not for distribution or resale)

Description

This version of the project budget template was designed with a new look and it provides multiple columns for fixed costs. Also, instead of using the Labor, Materials, and Fixed Costs columns to calculate the Budgeted amount, these columns are used to calculate the Actual amount.

"No installation, no macros - just a simple spreadsheet" - by Jon Wittwer

This spreadsheet is designed to make it easy to define and categorize all the costs associated with a detailed project. The categories are laid out in the traditional WBS (work breakdown structure) format, making this template a useful addition to our popular Gantt chart template , which can be used to define a detailed project schedule.

This sheet allows you to specify material and labor rates and quantities for each task - automatically calculating the dollar amount.

Basic Project Budget with Income Section

This version is based on our general business budget template, and includes a section for recording income sources. This spreadsheet can be useful for smaller projects such as home remodeling or other small construction projects, where it may not be as critical to use a detailed work breakdown structure (WBS).

When adding new budget categories, make sure to verify the formulas for the Subtotals and Totals. As your project progresses, enter the actual expenditures for each task to see how well you are staying on budget. The difference between the budget and the actual expenditures will be calculated for each task along with the total variance for the project.

Monthly Project Budgeting Template

This template is for defining a budget by listing expenses (and income) on a monthly basis, and you can easily delete or insert more columns for projects of different lengths.

This spreadsheet is a cross between our EVM Template and the Personal Budget Spreadsheet . If you want to plan, track and graph spending over time, you might want to use the EVM template.

• Make sure you document your assumptions when putting together your budget. These can be important when tracking your project and reviewing the outcome.
• Build some contingencies into your budget for unexpected costs and delays. But don't over inflate your budget too much or you may never get the project started.
• Don't try and do it all yourself. Make sure you get input from all the other key individuals and organizations that will play a role in delivering the project. They will be better able to provide accurate estimates of the project costs in their areas.
• Make sure you have an accurate understanding of your resources and the costs associated with those resources. Don't forget to include maintenance for machines and equipment. For individuals, be sure to add time off, overtime, insurance and other overhead numbers if needed.
• Watch your time estimates – don't underestimate the time it will take to complete tasks. This can run into scheduling conflicts which will ultimately blow your budget.
• Use your budget to track your performance and to communicate with other departments before, during and after your project.

Project Budget Resources

• Creating your project budget: Where to begin? - A great little article about things to consider when preparing your budget. While geared towards IT, much of it can be applied to any budgeting project.

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For Teachers

Home » Teachers

Budgeting Projects for High School Students

Here are our favorite budgeting projects to give to high school students.

Games and worksheets about budgeting are very helpful and deserve a place in the money education classroom. However, many students thrive in projects and learn much more deeply when they complete hands-on, extended activities. If you are searching for the best budgeting projects for high school students, look no further. Head over to my budgeting lesson plans center for more curriculum tips.

End-Of-The-Year Party Budgeting

This project requires students to create and maintain a budget for an end-of-the-year party. Students raise money and plan out all the necessary steps to reach their goals while sticking to a detailed plan. Kids work in pairs, groups, or independently to perform tasks. They need to figure out how much of their funds they will apply to various categories: food, decorations, entertainment, etc.

Students learn best through hands-on learning, and planning for their own party is a surefire path to success. They can monitor and adjust their budgets throughout the year, giving them valuable practice, team-building, and an ambitious goal to work towards. 

Budgeting Project

This project has all the materials you need to teach your students budgeting. The first step is a spending log, which shows kids how to track their expenses and payments throughout the year. They use these logs to compile data and create a pie graph displaying the results. They balance their income and spending to come up with percentages and, ultimately, a picture of their budgets. The culminating component is an essay reflecting on their spending and saving habits.

Kids learn a lot about budgeting and how to translate data from logs and demonstrate it in charts and graphs. They see how to work in groups and make goals they can reach along the way.

Trip Itinerary and Budget Project

This project provides students a chance to make a budget for travel, research how to book trips, and other real-life applications like how to save money on vacation. The description is detailed and supplies all the information learners will need to complete their activities. Students need to record all of their expenses and savings; if they go over budget, they lose points. This emphasizes the importance of sticking to a plan and understanding the many costs they will encounter on vacation.

Students learn practical information and see how decision-making skills are critical. They understand why planning to the dollar matters.

Compound Interest and Budgets

Students learn about compound interest in high school and likely associate it with saving and investing. Teachers can connect it to budgeting, as well. You can make cards with different interest rates and have students pick one randomly. Tell them that is the interest rate for their account. Have each school day equal 5-10 years of compounding and after a week, check to see how much their accounts have grown, comparing the amounts with their peers.

When you first begin the project, have students create detailed budgets. They will learn how to modify budgets based on income, expenses, investments, and saving. Afterward, have them make new budgets with the power of compounding included, showing students that they can increase their wealth and adjust their budgets based on ever-changing data and increased cash flow. 

Pay Yourself First

The idea of “paying yourself first” is a focal point for many money experts. The idea is to save as much as possible and guarantee you boost your finances, and teachers can work this idea into budgeting. Have students set aside money for saving or investing before paying any bills, and have them include it in their budgets. Give individual students a random amount of money to pay themselves first, and calculate how much their accounts would have grown over one, five, and ten years.

Reminding learners that the more detailed a budget is, the better. Focus on the positive and show them how budgets can do more than keep tabs on your spending: they can help build wealth, especially when they prioritize themselves in their spending.

Get a Life Budget Project

This project has all the materials you’ll need – including a WebQuest, Google Slides, budget trackers, check templates, and grocery list templates. Students are assigned a job to do and build budgets using their income. They take a field trip to a grocery store (real or virtual) and find the ingredients they need based on their meal plans and available money. They research how to buy a house and factor mortgages and down payments into their budgets.

When the project is complete, students present their findings, explaining how they managed to figure out their budgets using the income from their job. They also gain valuable experience in Google Drive, creating and using materials found there. 

Budget: Life Cycle Project

This project shows students how people modify budgets as they enter different phases in life. The phases included are high school, college, newlywed, and married. Students are put into groups of 2-3 and focus on one of the timeframes. They research the various expenses and potential income that many people encounter during these times and create a presentation. They report their budgets to the class and contribute them to a class-wide display.

Many students may not think about how budgets change depending on life circumstances. This project shows kids that different phases of life require varying budgets, and which expenses may come up in those times. 

Personal Budget Project

In this project , students create PowerPoints to summarize their research on different careers and salaries. They practice balancing expenses and income, breaking down their budget details across twelve slides and a written response. It goes into more depth than many other budget projects in every area. For example, they break their annual salaries into monthly amounts, use online real estate engines to search for real-time home prices, and calculate car-specific costs.

This project is great for your high school students as it results in practical and applicable information for their future. They calculate student loans and even gift expenses and factor those costs into budgets.

Project Budget Management: Steps, Tips, Best Practices

Project budget management is the process of planning, allocating, tracking, and controlling project resources throughout a project’s lifecycle.

But creating a project budget that works for you and your client is an art form. It’s the profitability of each project that will decide if your business sinks or swims. 💰

So in this post, you’ll learn how to create and manage a winning project budget like a pro.

What is a project budget?

A project budget is the total cost of all the tasks, activities, and materials associated with a client project.

A well-defined project budget helps you track the estimated costs versus the actual cost. And you can use it to track project expenses and reduce the likelihood of running out of resources or going over budget.

Project budget vs. estimate—what’s the difference?

A cost estimate approximates what the project (or piece of it) will cost. The budget is the final cost that’s allocated to the project.

The estimate is more of a ballpark figure, and the budget provides hard edges. You can’t go over-estimate, but you can go over budget.

Typical project costs

Project costs will vary from business to business, so we’ll stick with the most common ones:

You may also want to consider adding a percentage to the final project budget to cover indirect costs—such as your business’s overhead expenses (rent, utilities, employee training, etc.) 

Generally, you can use a percentage range between 10% to 30% of the total direct costs to cover indirect costs—but this will vary from business to business.

Techniques for estimating a project budget

Before you go ahead and rush into creating a project budget, it’s wise to get familiar with the different budget estimation techniques.

There are a wealth of proven project estimation techniques , but here are the ones we think will be most helpful to you:

Expert judgment

Analogous estimation.

• Top-down estimation
• Bottom-up estimation

This one is pretty self-explanatory.

Start with your team and add use SMEs if you have knowledge gaps. Expert judgment is helpful when you don’t have historical data, or the project is simple enough.

But the biggest downside to this approach is the subjectivity—one person’s estimate could be wildly different from yours, for example.

This is where historical data can be useful…

Analogous estimating is a pretty easy way to determine how much something might cost.

You look at similar projects you’ve done and use them to create a ballpark estimate for the project.

But be careful; this is only a reliable method for estimating a project budget if you can access past project data and the project isn’t overly complicated.

Using Toggl Track , you can view past project data using the Report Dashboard .

You can access data at project and task-level such as:

• Total tracked hours
• Total billable hours
• Total cost in labor

You can use this to put together quick estimates of costs and time.

Top-down estimating

Top-down estimating looks at the high-level project scope and budget, avoiding digging into the nitty-gritty of the work to create a ballpark estimate.

It is a form of analogous estimating, where existing knowledge of similar projects is used in the estimation process to produce a ballpark figure for the total cost.

Top-down estimating can also involve the client setting the budget—this means it’s up to you to allocate funds to different tasks, phases, or deliverables.

Top-down estimating can be super efficient and straightforward but often needs more detail and nuance. Plus, if the client has a tight budget, it can be challenging to fulfill the goals and objectives of the project.

Bottom-up estimating

Bottom-up estimating considers the time, cost, and effort for each task within the project. It then adds it up to create an estimation for the entire project.

It’s best to use a combination of a  Work Breakdown Structure  (WBS) and historical project data when using this technique.

This approach is much more detailed and accurate but can be incredibly time-consuming as it requires more input from your team.

Project budgeting tools

Here’s a list of tools you may find helpful when creating and managing your next project budget.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a way to break down a project into smaller, manageable tasks. That way, you can estimate the cost of individual tasks or phases to create a far more accurate budget for your client and statement of work .

You can use our free WBS template for this.

But creating a detailed WBS can take time—so it’s best to create one for projects when:

• You fully understand the project requirements .
• The client is committed to working with you and signing an SOW .

Learn more about the different types of project budget estimates in the ‘ When to create a project budget ’ section.

Spreadsheets

Using a spreadsheet to create a project budget is a practical way to organize and track your project’s expenses . 

Spreadsheets are great for creating and managing project budgets as they are versatile, efficient, and user-friendly.

Our WBS template incorporates project costs, so feel free to use that as your template.

Once the project has started, you can use our free project budget template to track expenses. The template focuses on tracking hours for specific tasks within a project and includes columns such as:

• Estimates hours
• Estimates cost
• Actual hours
• Actual cost
• Over / under (budget)

I’d recommend you check out the ‘ Free Project Budget Template ‘ guide to learn how it works best.

You can also incorporate a project time tracking tool into your project budget management process.

You can use Toggl Track’s Project Dashboard for your cost estimation process . You’ll get access to historical project data you can use to create quick estimates.

The Project Dashboard will let you dig into data such as:

• Total time tracked
• Total billable amount tracked
• Task level time and costs tracked

Once the project is up and running, you can easily track expenses and assess profitability in real-time.

You can use the Project Dashboard to track the project’s expenses (labor and contractor costs) against the fixed fee you set.

How to create a project budget in 7 Steps

A typical project budgeting process may look like this:

• Define the project scope and client requirements
• Break down the project into tasks
• Create a cost estimate for each task
• Build your project budget estimate
• Add a project buffer and contingency fund
• Get approval from the client
• Track and monitor the project budget

Note:  for a more thorough step-by-step guide on cost estimates, please head over to our  project cost and time estimate guide .

1. Define the project scope and client requirements

The first step in managing a project budget is knowing what must be done to deliver the project successfully.

This should be done during the project’s discovery phase, and you will best be able to define the project scope once you’ve gathered all project requirements .

Defining the project scope will give you a lot of necessary info like:

• What’s going into a project (resources)
• What’s coming out of it (deliverables)
• What needs doing (tasks)
• How long will it take (timeline)
• Everything the client is requesting

2. Break down the project into phases and tasks

The key to protecting any project budget is knowing the exact tasks you need to complete to deliver the project.

Once you’ve collected all project requirements and defined the project scope, you can break the project down into manageable phases and tasks.

The best way to do this is to use a  Work Breakdown Structure  (WBS). This will help you uncover everything you need to know to get the project over the line and protect the budget.

But what to list? What about the little tasks? How deep to go? Check out our guide ‘ Work Breakdown Structure: A Guide For Agencies ‘ to learn more.

3. Create a cost estimate for each task

Now that you know what tasks are involved, you can start understanding the time and costs associated.

Here’s an overview of different  project estimation techniques  for this step.

Say you’re using the bottom-up estimation technique. You can use the  WBS template  to build cost and time estimates for each task.

Alternatively, using  Toggl Track , you can use historical project data to help speed up this process. You can use the  Reports Dashboard  to analyze what went into them, including resources, time, and cost.

This is especially great for any project work consistent in scope, hours, and effort required.

4. Build your project budget estimate

With your list of potential project costs in hand, it’s time to start estimating the cost of your entire project.

You can approach a budget estimate in three ways:

• Using your experience
• Using the WBS template provided
• Use past historical data to create a quick estimate

But say you used the WBS template from above. You may have something that looks like the image below.

Look at your final number and review it, and review it again. Check it for accuracy by speaking to your team and reviewing similar past projects.

5. Add a project buffer and contingency fund to protect profits

Not everything goes as planned, so expect the unexpected.

A project buffer will help account for anything that could go wrong within the project. It will be a much-appreciated cushion for minor issues and sudden changes.

Issues like:

• Scope creep
• Sudden changes 
• Moving objectives
• Increases in material costs

Note:  we’ll look deeper at some of the issues above and how to deal with them below.

Your project buffer will also cover any little expense you didn’t (or couldn’t) account for — the unknown unknowns.

How much of a project buffer should you add?

Experts recommend adding about 10% – 20% to your project estimate. Check out the video below for more tips on this.

The better solution to adding buffers to your project cost estimates is to mitigate the impact of project risks by estimating for it upfront.

This can be done by adding a 20% contingency fund to your estimate to account for change and risk.

Don’t build this into your estimate; add it as a separate line item. This helps set a precedent and educates your client that changes to scope equate to additional costs from the contingency fund.

This means you can say yes to your clients a lot more, with a small caveat that you’ll be using the additional budget for it.

6. Get approval from the client

The last step in the project budget creation process. By now, you should have a project budget you’re happy with. So it’s time to get this sent to the client for approval.

If you’re creating a project budget as part of a proposal, remember to include the following:

Need a project proposal template? Download our free one  here .

After a client has reviewed your proposal/budget, listen to their feedback and make adjustments until you reach a budget that everyone can agree on.

Do clients often say your price is too high? Check out this video below.

7. Track and monitor the project budget

Once the project is underway, track project expenses against the budget to ensure you stay on track.

In the agency or freelancer world, this will typically mean keeping track of costs such as:

• Your labor costs/team labor cost
• Your time — aka your billable hours and actual costs
• Your project expenses (materials, software, contractor costs, etc.)

If you’re comfortable with spreadsheets, you may want to use our  project budget tracking template  to manage the overall budget.

But are spreadsheets your best option to control project costs ?

Probably not.

I’ve chatted with a few agencies and freelancers that use spreadsheets to track their time – and they  always  say how chaotic they are.

• Files get copied
• Some go “missing.”
• Formulas are unintentionally edited
• People don’t tend to fill them in all that much
• You’re unable to quickly get insights you can leverage (more on this later)

Thanks to  time tracking tools , tracking project budgets have never been more manageable.

Unlike spreadsheets, many of the  best time tracking tools  come with features that help to automate and streamline the entire project budget-tracking process.

Using Toggl Track , you and your employees can quickly start tracking your time by entering a time entry description and hitting the timer button.

It takes a few seconds to switch the timer to a different task (especially if projects and tasks are already set up).

• Type in your “time entry description”
• Find your client
• Select what “project” you’re working on
• Start the timer

Once you or your team accurately tracks time against the project, you can use the  Project Dashboard  to track your progress against the project budget.

Project Time Estimates  lets you view whether you’re over on hours or on target based on the estimate you set. If you’ve exceeded the time estimate, the time tracked will turn red.

The Time Tracking Chart will show a forecast for project completion based on the project estimate and the hours clocked for that project so far.

The Billing Amounts chart shows the progress against a fixed fee amount (the project budget) set for the project.

Below these forecasting charts, you will also see a bar and pie chart representing current data containing total clocked hours,  billable hours , and remaining hours (based on the project estimate).

Want to see how profitable each project is?

Head over to the  Insights Dashboard —it’s designed to give you more details about the profitability of your projects  and  team members.

You can better monitor a project’s budget using  Alerts in Toggl Track . You can set up Alerts to be triggered based on a time estimate or a fixed fee.

When to create a project budget

You probably spend a lot of time creating proposals and going through an entire sales cycle, only to be told the client isn’t interested in working with you.

Want a hack to save you some time during this process?

Here are three different types of budget estimates you should consider:

• Ballpark estimate  – The client needs to know if the project is possible, but you need more information to give a proper estimate. So you can do this by giving them a ballpark estimate of the project’s cost based on expert judgment or historical data ($80k-$140k).
• Budget estimate  – Suppose the client is happy with the ballpark estimate. In that case, you may ask for more information about the project to assemble a more accurate estimate and plan using a WBS or historical data. Your revised estimate may change to $90k-$130k.
• Statement of work estimate – Assuming the client is still good to go, the final step in the estimate refinement is creating a detailed WBS using your team and historical data to make your final budget estimate. This is the cost you should include in your SOW. You may adjust your estimate to $100k + a 20% contingency fund.

Why do projects go over budget?

Your project budget will inevitably hit a snag no matter how well managed. So let’s look at some top reasons project budgets go overboard and what you can do to prevent them.

Additional client requests

It’s easy to get tied up in client-pleasing.

They ask for another web page–sure! They ask for another revision–you got it!

If you aren’t charging for the “little extras” you’ll risk going over budget.

You will inevitably face them—but knowing how to deal with additional requests is critical here.

Here are three ways to best handle additional requests:

It’s healthy to set boundaries with clients. Charge for little extras, or acknowledge the request and let them know it will cost extra. Communicate with them, and both parties will be better for it.

Sudden changes

Unexpected changes can take a bite out of your budget.

These additions could be something that wasn’t included in the initial planning or a sudden need to adapt due to unforeseen circumstances.

Unplanned changes can include:

• Lacking specific resources and materials
• A team member leaving the project
• A team member was sick
• Vital tasks that were forgotten and, as a result, never added included in the budget

Protecting yourself from people leaving your business or being off sick is hard. 

But you can use as much past project data and as you can get your hands on to protect budgets and profits better.

This may mean reviewing old project plans, past cost estimates or better understanding the potential risks of each project .

All this information will help you make better decisions on budgeting for and managing your projects .

Poor planning

Yes, poor planning can lead to a poorly planned budget. Another disaster averted by Captain Obvious.

In all seriousness, this is a crucial point to stress.

60%  of projects have a scoping document, defined methodology, and undergo risk management.

This means that 40% of projects don’t have a solid plan. That’s 400 projects out of 1,000. 💀

The best way to prevent this is to plan, schedule, and review each project. Preferably with multiple team members to get several sets of eyes on it.

Here’s a project schedule laid out in  Toggl Plan .

Comb through your  project’s plan  carefully,  assessing time ,  project costs , and risks as you go.

Double-check and triple-check your project before you waste boatloads of time and money.

A session or two of reviewing a project plan will allow you to spot potential problems ahead of time and ensure everything’s water-tight.

The moving target

Goals and objectives moving constantly can de-rail any project.

You may find yourself in a situation where your trying to get a deliverable over the line, but the client keeps moving the goalposts. 

Meaning you spend more time on each task than needed.

How do you deal with this? 

• Stop everything you’re doing immediately.
• Get clarity from the client.

Stop all work on the project immediately and get clarification from the client asap. You’re going to burn through the budget if not. 

Send them an email or give them a call and say something as simple as:

“In the interest of keeping this project on track and within budget, I need some help clarifying our goals and direction moving forward.”

You must let them know that you are mindful of their budget and time.

Spend time revisiting the project scope and SOW (your safety net) and ask the client, “are these still our goals and objectives?”

If not, then you can acknowledge the new direction and charge accordingly.

Project budget best practices

Wondering how some of the pros manage their budgets?

We reached out to several agency owners and project managers about what they do to keep a project budget on track. 

Here are some of our favorite tips:

Be transparent with the client

James Nesbitt of Myth , an app and software development agency, puts client transparency at the top of his list.

“ A big part of project budget management for us is being incredibly transparent with our clients from the outset and again once a project is underway. 

This all comes down to your onboarding process and taking the time to cover all project aspects extensively with the client to ensure that both parties are on board with expectations about the required deliverables. “

The best way to tackle this is to:

• Collect and fully understand the requirements of the project
• Breakdown the project into phases/deliverables using a WBS
• Document all project phases/deliverables in a statement of work
• Get the client to agree that anything out of scope will be charged extra
• Create a project timeline with all tasks and milestones that can be shared with the client

Following the steps above means you’re not going into a project afraid of additional requests that will likely lead to a spiraling budget.

• Create a risk management plan

One of the most common challenges in project management is fighting off project risks from consuming your budget.

What do common project risks look like?

Here’s a quick summary of project risk examples for you skimmers:

Common project risks will inevitably creep toward a project budget, so a risk management plan is crucial.

This is what Simon Bacher of Ling App has mastered to keep his projects on track:

“ Without a comprehensive risk management plan, unexpected risks get out of hand, which will only inflate project costs over time… I create and implement a yearly risk management plan based on historical and projected risks. “

The best way to defend yourself against project risks is to:

• Understand common project risks and how to avoid them
• Perform a risk assessment with your team

Collaborate with your clients

Who knew that communicating with clients would be beneficial to keeping a project budget on track? 🤡

John White of Complete White Label , a link-building and content marketing agency, stresses the importance of working with your clients from the outset.

“ Setting these targets collaboratively with our clients has led to fewer budget overruns since it improves our ability to plan efficiently, allowing us to allocate resources and time better, ultimately narrowing the budget. “

What can you do to get the client involved?

You should both work on the following:

• Defining project expectations
• Creating a detailed project plan
• Building a project timeline with goals and milestones

Create your project plan and timeline internally, then share it with your client for feedback.

Use Toggl Plan to create a visual timeline to share with your clients.

Shared timelines are read-only. This means your client cannot edit the timeline in any way. They can, however, view the entire timeline together with tasks and milestones.

Have regular check-ins with the client

Communication with your client shouldn’t stop when the project has started.

One strategy Ryan Mckenzie of Tru Earth uses to manage a project budget is periodic project status check-ins with key stakeholders.

“ These check-ins helped me identify scope creep or other issues that could lead to the project being over budget. During these check-ins, it’s essential to assess progress and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding any changes in scope or timeline that could increase costs. “

How often should you check in with your client?

Honestly? It depends. 🤷‍♀️

There are two main factors to consider: 

• The length of the project
• The size of the project

A multi-year project might only require a status report every quarter or every six months. But a project that lasts six months? Monthly reporting is probably a good cadence.

While keeping management or your client informed of the progress is essential, project reports often take time. So creating them too often might be considered wasteful. 

But then there is the second element to consider—the project’s size.

Straightforward projects like creating a one-page flyer probably don’t need much reporting. 

But something as complex as a website build, mobile app, or branding campaign may require regular updates. So writing a project report every month or quarter is worthwhile. 

But don’t go overboard with project progress reports. Too much project reporting can be problematic. You don’t want to drown yourself with admin work when your time could be better spent on profitable work. Try and apply some common sense.

Create a detailed statement of work

A statement of work (SOW) is probably the most important document in any project.

It helps to:

• Provide a framework for communication
• Manage and avoid common project risks
• Act as the baseline for project post-mortems
• Establishes goals, objectives, and deliverables 

An SOW is a document that Rocco Brudno , a content and SEO consultant, is all too familiar with.

“ Clients often have different expectations of what to expect once a project starts. So getting project details ironed out from the start can significantly reduce the variables that create out-of-scope work and ensure everyone is on the same page. “

In disputes or disagreements, your SOW is the document you should refer to if you think your client is requesting work out of scope.

Track project progress and expenses

Tracking project progress using project management software is another way to help keep project budgets on track.

Maria Harutyunyan, Co-founder & Head of SEO at Loopex Digital , champions this approach:

“ One strategy that has helped me keep client project budgets on track is utilizing project management software to ensure visibility and accountability across the project lifecycle…having an overview of everything related to a single client project makes it easy for everyone involved in the team (including clients) to stay updated on progress. “

Toggl Plan allows you to organize tasks on a Kanban board format and provides a clear overview of task statuses.

The Kanban board helps you to protect your project budget by allowing you to:

• Reorder and prioritize upcoming tasks with our simple drag-and-drop interface.
• Prioritize tasks during sprints without focusing on time estimations.
• Segment all tasks based on their current status for the best project overview.

Or, you can switch to a project timeline view that can be used to schedule and track a project from start to end.

The timeline view helps you to protect your project budget by allowing you to

• Get a clear overview of who’s doing what and when.
• Visually track tasks from start to finish as they get done.
• Schedule tasks without conflicting with other projects, time off, and public holidays.
• Create color-coded milestones and optionally make them visible across projects to meet deadlines.

Toggl Plan integrates seamlessly with Toggl Track  to help you better track your project costs and protect your budget.

Turning projects into profit

Money no longer gets to pull your puppet strings. It’s long overdue that  you  control your money.

For more reading on cost estimation and budgeting in project management, go check out our guide on  estimating the cost of a project .

Want to learn more about managing projects?

Check out the following guides:

• How to Maximize Your Project Profitability
• How to Track Project Expenses (And Stay Within Budget)
• Project Monitoring: The Beginner’s Guide
• Project Cost Management: The Ultimate Guide
• What is a Statement of Work? A Guide for Beginners
• How to Create the Perfect Project Management Plan

Sean is a Content Marketer at Toggl. He's been involved in SEO and Content Marketing since 2017. Before working for Toggl, Sean ran SEO at a digital marketing agency—so he's all too familiar with time tracking and project management.

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8 Budget Templates for Business & Project Budgeting

The project budget is developed during the planning phase of a project. It’s a document that captures the total costs required to complete a project over a specified timeframe. The more accurate your forecast for project costs, the more likely you’ll be able to deliver a successful project and make a profit. To help you get started, we have 7 free budget templates that you can download right now.

7 Budgeting Templates for Business and Project Budgeting

Below are seven budget templates that you can use for estimating your project costs . There are some industry-specific budgeting templates, too, but all of them will help you forecast costs, which is the first step in running a tight budget and delivering a successful project.

ProjectManager is award-winning project management software, but our website is a hub for all things project-related. We publish weekly blogs on the topic, and have in-depth guides, tutorial videos and free project management templates for Excel and Word.

We’ve selected the ones that can help you with your budget, but there are free templates available for every phase of your project. Visit our template page and you’re sure to find something to help you plan, manage and track your project.

1. Budget Proposal Template

Before you can create a project or business budget, you have to get it approved. That means you’re going to need to write a budget proposal to pitch the idea to your executive team and stakeholders. This is a critical step as it will determine if the project is a go or if the powers that be choose to pass on it. This is why our free budget proposal template for Excel is so important.

A budget proposal is a document that estimates the cost of executing a potential project. It’s used to secure funding and, if the project is approved this document will be the foundation of your project budget. A budget proposal can be used for a future project, but that’s not all. They’re also great for a business budget , an upcoming campaign or any enterprise in which it’s critical to show the benefits are greater than the costs.

Our free budget proposal template is broken down into categories, such as salaries, materials, equipment, travel, communications and any miscellaneous items. But the template is fully customizable so you can add or subtract as you see fit for whatever budget you’re proposing. By estimating the costs of everything involved in the project, you’ll get an accurate forecast of your potential costs (though it helps to seek out experts who’ve been there and done that as well as historical data).

2. Project Budget Template

Once the budget proposal has been approved, it’s time to build a budget. This will take all the financial details that you gathered in your proposal, especially the cost estimates, and lay them out for your team to have the resources they need to execute the project successfully.

The project budget template will need to cover a lot of bases, including the hiring of a team, subcontractors, vendors, materials, equipment and more. All of which cost money.

Our free project budget template for Excel is customizable so you can add as much to it as you need to cover the expenses of your project. First, you can list all your tasks and who they’re assigned to. Then there are the costs to collect for each, such as labor and materials. While that might be the bulk of your costs, a budget is more than just those two resources. That’s why we’ve added travel, equipment and fixed costs. Again, you can add more columns if necessary. At the far right end of the spreadsheet is a column for your budgeted and actual expenses, with the final column noting if you’re under or over budget.

That can help you track, but a template is a static document that must be manually updated. Project management software is going to automate many of those tasks to help you manage your budget more efficiently. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that can help you plan, manage and track your costs in real time. Either start your budget in our software or upload the budget template into our Gantt chart. Now you can link all four types of task dependencies to avoid costly delays, filter for the critical path to identify essential tasks to keep you on schedule and set a baseline to track your actual costs against your budget in real time. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

3. Marketing Budget Template

As we’ve mentioned above, a budget is useful across all industries. If it costs money to do, then a budget is instrumental in making sure those costs don’t balloon and bankrupt you. Marketing campaigns aren’t cheap and there’s always a client looking over your shoulder to make sure they’re getting bang for their buck. Having a marketing budget is a way not only to forecast the cost of the marketing campaign but can help legitimize your expenses with the client so they understand where every dollar went and how it was spent wisely.

Using our free marketing budget template for Excel will help you estimate the financial element of the marketing campaign by outlining all the potential costs, which will then be approved by the client to ensure that everyone is aware of the expense and has signed off on it. The marketing budget will provide guidelines to the marketing team in terms of what they can and can’t spend to fulfill the mandate of their client. Marketing departments are also under a mandate, whether they’re part of a larger organization or a boutique firm, and that’s to keep costs low. Budgeting templates help by forecasting and tracking costs to ensure they stay within budget.

Marketing can be many things and that’s reflected in our marketing budget template. Again, every budget template is customizable so you can add or remove what you want to fit your marketing budget. We’ve broken up our marketing budget template into various campaigns, such as email, direct mail, online and promotions. Under each category are the various tasks associated with them. For each, we have a column to note the total budget and it’s also broken up into quarters, as marketing budgets usually are.

4. Event Budget Template

An event can be part of a marketing campaign, such as a trade show or product launch, or it can even be a personal thing, such as a birthday party, wedding or bar mitzvah. Whatever type of event you’re having, it’ll involve money and that means it will need a budget template to make sure that money is well spent and doesn’t break the bank. This is true for any event, whether it’s small or large and complex. Events have a tendency to get out of hand and an event budget template is a tool to not only forecast the cost but keep track of what you’re spending.

As with any budget template, our free event budget for Excel helps you to estimate the costs involved in making whatever function you’re putting on. It does this as all budgeting templates do, by having a cost associated with every event planning task, which includes all the resources you’ll need to execute those tasks. Once you’ve created your budget, the next step is to get it approved. When approved, you’ll execute the tasks. The marketing budget template continues to be useful as it allows you to track those costs to make sure that you’re not overspending.

The event budget template is customizable so you can use our categories or add your own. Therefore, this budgeting template can work with any event. We break it down by categories, such as venue, equipment, travel and accommodation and marketing. The next column lists the vendor or contractor you’re working with. Then there’s a column for labor and material costs followed by a total for the line item. The next column is where you’ll add the actual cost so you can compare it to your budgeted cost and make sure you’re keeping to your budget.

5. Operating Budget Template

Another type of budget template is one dedicated to operating expenses. An operating budget is used by organizations to look at the coming year through a financial lens. It’s used to forecast the revenue and expenses that an organization expects to make over the coming year or quarter, depending on the timeframe for the operating budget. Most organizations will set their operating budget in the fourth quarter and use it as a plan for the coming year. It’ll show what they expect to do and how much that will cost as well as how much they hope to make, including fixed costs and variable costs.

Our free operating budget template for Excel will help you manage your day-to-day operations and help your business meet its strategic goals without spending more than it has to. But things change and our operating budget template allows you to adjust your operating budget to reflect those changes and you measure how you performed over a month or quarter compared to what you had planned. The operating budget will give your organization accountability as well as planning and managing your resources. It identifies cost drives and helps to find when you can increase cost efficiency and profitability.

Use our free operating budget template to figure out the products or services you’ll sell over the quarter or year and their costs as well as how you plan to sell them. Next, budget those costs, including direct expenses and cost per unit, units sold and the total cost. Operating expenses are outlined for each month, including fixed and variable costs. We’ve also added a section for unexpected expenses so there’s a cushion in your operating budget because there are always unexpected expenses.

6. Project Estimate Template

While not exactly a budget, estimating is a necessary step toward creating an accurate budget. The more accurate your estimates are, the more accurate your budget is. Every budget begins with a project estimate , which is a bit of a science and a bit of an act of faith. If you have historical data that can help you determine what things will cost. It’s also good to seek the advice of experts. A project estimate template is also important.

Using our free project estimate template for Excel will help you build your budget by identifying the resources you’ll need and for how long you’ll need them. Then you can start figuring out how much each of these costs will be. Bit by bit, you’ll be able to make an accurate forecast of the financial investment needed for your project and from there, it’s only a small step to making the project budget, which you can do with one of the many free budget templates we’ve highlighted above.

Our project estimate template does this by first breaking up your project into phases. Every project has five phases: initiation, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling , and, finally, closure. Each of those phases will have expenses associated with it. Our free template lets you define them by tasks, vendor or contractor, labor and material costs. Once you’ve filled in all the tasks for all the phases, you’ll have a clear idea of what the project is going to cost.

7. Construction Estimate Template

If you’re a construction project manager , you understand the importance of an accurate estimate. If the project ends up costing more than you budgeted for, those extra costs are coming out of your profits. Accurate estimates are always important, of course, but when those dollars are coming out of your pocket chances are you’re going to pay closer attention. That’s why you’ll want to take time for a thorough construction project estimate.

A free construction estimate template for Excel is a great place to start when figuring out the finances for your project. Of course, there isn’t just one type of construction estimate. There is the preliminary estimate, which is a general overview of costs. A detailed estimate used the design documents to estimate raw materials, equipment and labor costs. There is also a quantity estimate, which relies on material takeoffs, and a bid estimate, which is the final version sent by the general contractor to the project owner.

Our free construction estimate template helps you forecast labor costs, material costs and your profit market as the contractor for the job. These are the basic components of any construction estimate . Labor estimates refer to the human resources who execute the tasks. Material costs are those raw materials used to construct what you’re building. The profit margin is a percentage of this to cover all costs, including labor, materials, direct, indirect and overhead costs.

8. Inventory Template

This inventory template is designed to help you keep track of various types of physical goods inventories, like the raw materials you need to manufacture your products, the product stock that you have available for sale or even products that are still in process.

It allows you to monitor the number of units in stock, price per unit, reorder information and total inventory cost. It’s a must-have business template for any business owner, manufacturer, retailer or store owner.

Use ProjectManager to Get More Than Templates Can Give

While our free templates are a great way to help you estimate your project costs and even make a budget, you’re not going to want to run a project on templates. Templates just can’t do what a project requires. You’ll always have to stop what you’re doing to manually update the template and they’re not a great collaboration tool. That’s why project management software was developed, to give project teams greater control over what they do and do it more efficiently. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that helps you not only create a budget but has the tools to track costs.

Monitor Labor Costs With Timesheets

One of the budgetary costs that can quickly get out of control is your labor costs. When projects get delayed, your crew is on the job site longer than you expected or the team is working more days than were initially scheduled. This is all going to impact your budget. One way to make sure your team is keeping to the project plan is with our secure timesheets. Not only do they streamline and add security to the payroll process, they track the hours each team member is spending on their tasks. You can then use this to see if they’re keeping up or falling behind and reallocate resources accordingly to stay on track

Track Progress With Real-Time Dashboards

Another way to make sure you’re staying on budget is to monitor your project. This is part of the monitor and control phase, which occurs with executing the project. Our real-time dashboards allow you to get a high-level view of the project’s progress and performance whenever you want. Just toggle over to the dashboard and it automatically collects live data and displays it on easy-to-read graphs and charts that show metrics, such as cost, time, workload and more. Best of all, there’s no lengthy and complicated setup required as with lightweight alternatives. Our dashboard is ready when you are.

When you want more detail than our dashboard can provide, use our customizable reports. They can be generated in a couple of keystrokes and filtered to show only the data you want to see. There are status reports and portfolio status reports if you’re managing a program or portfolio. There are also timesheets, variance and more reports, all of which can be saved in a variety of formats that can then be delivered to stakeholders to keep them updated.

ProjectManager is cloud-based project management software that connects teams whether they’re in the office, out in the field or anywhere in between. They can share files, comment at the task level and get notified by email or in-app alerts whenever there are changes or updates. Our software helps teams collaborate better and is used by companies as diverse as Avis, Nestle and Siemens to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

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How to Make a Budget Spreadsheet

• A budget spreadsheet simplifies tracking income and expenses, aligning daily spending with overall financial goals.
• Key steps include choosing a user-friendly tool like Excel ® or Google Sheets ® , setting up detailed budget categories, and deciding on a tracking period (monthly, quarterly, yearly).
• Effective budget management involves inputting actual financial data, utilizing formulas for automatic calculations, and comparing planned versus actual spending.
• Regular updates to the budget spreadsheet are crucial for adapting to financial changes and staying on track with goals.

A budget is a  powerful tool that helps you make informed spending and savings decisions. It provides the freedom to spend with confidence, knowing your actions align with bigger-picture financial goals.

Tracking income and expenses by hand may seem like a hassle, but a well-designed budget spreadsheet makes it easy.

Knowing how to make a budget spreadsheet that’s customized to your needs allows you to effectively track finances without the need for expensive software or specialized financial knowledge.

In the following guide, we’ll walk through the process, from selecting the right platform to categorizing expenses and monitoring your progress. It’s an easy solution you can implement right away.

What Is a Budget Spreadsheet and How Is It Used?

A budget spreadsheet is a simple tool for organizing and tracking income and expenses. It provides a clear view of money coming in and going out over a set period of time, typically weekly or monthly. Assigning categories to each income and expense makes it easy to identify trends and uncover potential savings opportunities. Pre-planning weekly or monthly spending also helps ensure there’s enough left over to allocate toward saving for short-term and longer-term financial goals.

Regularly updating and reviewing a budget spreadsheet turns it into an active financial management tool. It helps you spot patterns, such as seasonal increases in utility bills, and proactively adjust the spending and savings goals to reflect changes in income, expenses, or financial priorities.

Choosing the Right Tool for Your Budget Spreadsheet

There is a wide range of tools and software for creating and managing a budget, but how do you make a budget spreadsheet that works well over the long term? To choose a platform that suits your needs, consider the following factors:

• Ease of use : The best budgeting tool is one you use consistently. Look for an option that’s easy to set up and navigate. This will help ensure you’re comfortable making regular updates.
• Accessibility : Consider whether the tool is accessible across devices, such as your phone, tablet, or computer.
• Cost : Free options often work as well as paid tools, allowing for simple budget tracking without additional expense.
• Advanced features : Consider whether the tool offers advanced features such as customizable categories, automatic calculations, and charts and graphs to enhance the budgeting experience.

Popular Spreadsheet Tools: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets

Microsoft Excel ® and Google Sheets ® are two of the most popular spreadsheet programs. Both are user-friendly and offer a range of budgeting features.

Microsoft Office Excel

Excel, the spreadsheet tool included in Microsoft Office Suite ® , is ideal for those who prefer a detailed budgeting approach and want customizable options. It comes with a range of budgeting templates, allowing for quick, easy setup without the need to manually create rows, columns, and formulas. You’ll find options available for everything from a standard household budget to budgets made specifically for planning events or tracking holiday spending .

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a user-friendly option that is free to use with a Google account. It includes several pre-made budget templates, including monthly and annual budgets. Sheets are stored in Google Drive ® , a cloud-based platform that allows you to access the budget from wherever you are. This ensures the budget is available from your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

The Advantages Of Using a Premade Template

Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets both offer the ability to build a budget spreadsheet from scratch. However, choosing a pre-made budget template offers a ready-made structure, saving time and allowing you to focus on entering financial information right away.

The templates are designed with the user experience in mind, offering clear categories and useful formulas. While they provide a ready-to-use foundation, they’re often fully editable, allowing for small changes to better align the budget spreadsheet with your personal financial goals.

Setting Up Your Budget Categories and Time Frame

Organizing financial transactions into relevant categories helps you easily identify spending habits and make adjustments to help maintain a positive cash flow. The number of categories used depends on your situation, goals, and personal preferences. Begin with two primary categories: Income and Expenses. Then, break these down into relevant sub-categories.

Income Categories

When tracking your income, you may include categories such as:

• Rental income
• Investment income
• Freelance income

Expense Categories

There are several options for tracking budget categories. Depending on your goals and personal preferences, you may choose broad categories or track with greater detail.

General vs. Detailed

General expense categories may include items such as:

• Mortgage/rent
• Credit card payments
• Pet expenses

If you prefer more detail, consider tracking individual bills by creating another layer of sub-categories. For example, the utilities category may include:

• Electric bill
• Heating bill

While detailed categories take more time to set up initially, the additional information can help you identify areas where you could cut costs.

Fixed vs. Variable

You may also categorize expenses based on whether they are fixed or variable. For example, fixed expenses include rent or mortgage, insurance premiums, car payments, and other expenses that remain fairly consistent from month to month.

Variable expenses include items that change from month to month, such as dining out, hobbies, and shopping. Since variable expenses are typically easier to cut if necessary, adding this category can help with financial evaluations.

Savings and Investments

Finally, consider adding a budget category for savings and investments . This may include:

• Contributions to savings accounts
• Emergency fund savings
• Retirement account contributions
• Contributions to other investments

Budgeting for savings and investments helps prioritize these goals, ensuring you’ve set aside money for planned contributions rather than relying on leftover funds.

Determining Your Budget Period

Once you’ve determined key categories, decide how frequently to track, review, and update the budget. Many individuals use monthly or weekly tracking. However, depending on your needs, you may track more or less frequently. Quarterly, annual, or multi-year tracking can help with bigger-picture goals, while weekly or daily tracking helps you stay focused on short-term, specific goals.

You may find it helpful to combine several time periods, for example, using an annual budget to gain clarity on long-term trends and habits while tracking more frequently to allow for real-time adjustments.

Crafting Your Budget: Entering Income and Expenses

Now that the spreadsheet is ready, it’s time to input your financial information. While entering data and crunching numbers may not feel exciting, keep in mind that the spreadsheet will perform all of the calculations almost instantly — turning a potentially tedious task into a quick and satisfying experience. Here’s how to get started.

1. Input Your Data

Since you may not remember all income and expenses offhand, begin by pulling out your last few bank account and credit card statements. Enter each deposit and expense as a separate line item and choose the correct categories.

2. Utilize Formulas

Once you’ve entered all the data, use formulas to quickly perform key calculations, such as totaling expenses, calculating the difference between your income and expenses, or averaging spending to find monthly patterns.

If you’ve used a budget spreadsheet, the formulas are likely already included and will run automatically. Many spreadsheet tools also include pre-made formulas, which you can add for additional analysis.

3. Compare Planned vs. Actual Income and Expenses

Consider setting up separate columns for your projected and actual income and expenses, plus a column for the variance between these figures. This setup offers clear insights into how closely you’re meeting financial targets and areas that need attention. If this is not part of the premade template, add formulas to automatically complete the calculations.

Regularly Monitoring and Updating Your Budget  

Many situations can affect your budget, from a pay raise to a change in expenses or a shift in financial goals. It’s important to regularly review and update the spreadsheet to ensure it remains an effective financial tool. During the review process, make changes as needed so it continues to accurately reflect your financial situation.

Regularly reviewing your budget spreadsheet also helps highlight spending patterns, identify areas for savings, and ensure your finances remain in alignment with short-term and longer-term goals.

Generally, a monthly update is sufficient. However, if you’re actively working to reduce debt or meet a short-term savings goal, weekly updates may prove more beneficial.

Empower Your Personal Finance with a Custom Budget Spreadsheet

Creating a budget spreadsheet is an important step toward taking control of your finances. The key is to start simple, stay consistent, and make adjustments along the way.

Once you’re comfortable with the process of regularly reviewing and updating the spreadsheet, it becomes a powerful tool that guides spending and savings decisions, helping you achieve bigger-picture financial goals.

For more information and financial management tips, read PNC Bank’s Personal Finance Insights . Here, you’ll find various topics designed to help you gain financial knowledge and empower your financial future.

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Important Legal Disclosures and Information

1. Wall Street Journal, accessed April 2, 2024 https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-gas-prices-surge-stations-now-hold-up-to-175-of-your-money-when-you-swipe-11656277411

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These articles are for general information purposes only and are not intended to provide legal, tax, accounting or financial advice. PNC urges its customers to do independent research and to consult with financial and legal professionals before making any financial decisions. This site may provide reference to Internet sites as a convenience to our readers. While PNC endeavors to provide resources that are reputable and safe, we cannot be held responsible for the information, products or services obtained on such sites and will not be liable for any damages arising from your access to such sites. The content, accuracy, opinions expressed and links provided by these resources are not investigated, verified, monitored or endorsed by PNC.

• Defining and Managing Financial Projects

Import Project Budgets

Import project budgets from third-party applications into the Oracle Project Control work area by using the Import Project Budgets Excel workbook template and running a few scheduled processes. The Excel template is part of the External Data Integration Services for Oracle Cloud feature.

You can also update a project budget using the Import Project Budgets file-based data import process. For example, to adjust the budget in anticipation of cost overruns, enter Update as the processing mode and enter the plan line details including the Plan Version Number and the new amounts in the respective columns.

To import the project budgets:

Prepare your data in the ImportProjectBudgets macro-enabled Excel workbook template.

Click Generate CSV File in the template to create a comma-separated values file of awards.

Navigate to the Scheduled Processes page.

Submit the Load Interface File for Import process to load the budgets data from your CSV file into the applications related open interface tables.

Submit the Import Project Budgets process to bring the data into the Project Control work area from the open interface tables.

Parameters for Load Interface File for Import Process

From Project Name

Beginning project name in a range of projects, from the PJO_PLAN_VERSIONS_XFACE table, provided for importing project budget versions.

To Project Name

Ending project name in a range of projects, from the PJO_PLAN_VERSIONS_XFACE table, provided for importing project budget versions.

Project Budgets Upload Error Report

Review the output reports and repeat the following steps until you import all the required budgets data successfully:

Correct the errors in the Import Project Budgets Rejections report.

Generate CSV files for the corrected budgets.

Upload the CSV files into the open interface tables.

Submit the Import Project Budgets process.

The mission to retrieve a Mars sample is running into turbulence

H undreds of millions of miles away, on the frigid surface of Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is hard at work, diligently gathering fresh samples of Martian rock, sealing them in pristine tubes, and leaving them on the surface ready for collection.

If they can be brought back to Earth, these would be an invaluable scientific resource: the first sample ever collected from another planet, which could answer fundamental questions about the history and habitability of Mars.

But like a child forgotten at school pickup, Perseverance may face a long, lonely wait for collection. The mission to retrieve the samples, called Mars Sample Return (MSR), has already caused NASA huge headaches with costs projected to hit $11 billion and a timetable that an independent review declared wholly unrealistic.

“The bottom line is, an $11 billion budget is too expensive, and a 2040 return date is too far away,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson recently, announcing that the agency would be looking to make major changes, including soliciting help from the aerospace industry.

Proponents of the mission argue that it is the best chance we’ll ever have to find evidence of life beyond Earth and that samples from Mars can reveal crucial information, like how long the planet had water on its surface and when it lost its atmosphere. But critics point to the ever-ballooning budget and question whether the scientific payoff is worth the expense.

There are hopes that private industry could help, with options being floated like using the SpaceX Starship to carry the sample back from Mars . But even if that works, there are still significant challenges to address. Perhaps the biggest is launching a rocket from the Martian surface, something that has never been done before, not to mention getting a launch vehicle to rendezvous with a Starship in orbit and transfer the samples for transport back to Earth.

NASA has not shied away from acknowledging the scope of the task or the doubts raised by the public about whether that money could be better spent elsewhere. However, experts agree that sample return offers an opportunity to learn about Mars and other planets that robotic exploration can’t hope to match.

Instruments the size of a city block

With the tremendous success of the Mars rover program, it’s reasonable to ask why carrying samples all the way back to Earth is necessary when rovers are already so capable and will only become more so in the future. The answer is simple: there’s no substitute for a well-equipped Earth lab.

The Perseverance rover has an impressive set of instruments on board, but it’s not feasible to engineer some tools to fit onto a mobile platform. Scientists want to use instruments that are room-sized, like mass spectrometers used for dating planetary materials, and ones that are the size of a city block, like particle accelerators called synchrotrons that can analyze the composition of samples down to their tiniest parts, explained Mini Wadhwa, the MSR principal scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The instruments need to be so big in part because the indicators that scientists are looking for in the samples will be so small. To detect organic molecules (not necessarily signs of life but the building blocks for living things) in a sample, for example, requires looking for extremely small amounts of material in samples that are already only a few grams in mass. And looking for indications of life in the structures of rock, called morphologic biomarkers, requires extremely sensitive measurements using powerful microscopes.

“This is work that you cannot do with a rover,” said Katie Stack Morgan, a Mars research scientist at JPL. “We don’t have the instrumentation and we don’t have a way to make those measurements. Yet those are so key in the search for life and understanding how Mars as a planet — atmosphere, surface, subsurface — interacted with each other.”

Even those who have raised questions about the costs or challenges of the MSR mission have no doubts about the enormous potential value of having Mars samples on Earth.

“For the cost of Mars Sample Return, we could do a lot of wonderful robotic science,” said Michael Hecht, principal investigator of MOXIE, or the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, on the Perseverance rover. “But I don’t think anyone would contest the idea that given samples here in an Earth laboratory, we could accomplish things that are leaps and bounds beyond what we can accomplish on Mars.”

A project of epic scale

For those unconvinced by the payoff, NASA may need to put in more work to persuade critics of the importance of samples to planetary science beyond Mars.

“Is the planetary science community as a whole chomping at the bit to say, yes, bring those samples home? No,” said Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist who has worked on other NASA missions but is not involved in the Mars program, adding that the problem was one of messaging and communication as much as anything else: “NASA has not done a particularly great job advocating for the scientific value of these samples.”

It’s not that planetary scientists as a group are against Mars research or that they don’t see the value of Mars samples. It’s more of a worry that MSR could take up more budget in the future.

NASA has been very explicit that MSR won’t eat up the entire budget for planetary science and that it exists on top of existing planetary research. However, the planetary science division has struggled with other budget issues, including overruns or delays for major missions like Psyche , Dragonfly , Europa Clipper , and Veritas and long-term delays and problems caused by the covid-19 pandemic.

To make MSR happen, the entire planetary science community will need to come together in support, as the astrophysics community did with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope — another mammoth project that was hugely expensive and ran years behind schedule. “This is the first project of this scale the planetary science community has ever had to contend with,” said Byrne. “It is our Webb moment.”

A risky justification

Much of the justification for the huge expense of MSR comes from a single issue. There’s a very real chance that getting samples back to Earth could answer the biggest question in all of space research: did life ever exist on another planet?

While there is almost certainly nothing alive on the surface of Mars now, the planet was potentially habitable billions of years ago, when water flowed plentifully and microbial life could have flourished. The area where the Perseverance rover is exploring, called the Jezero Crater, was once an ancient lake, and the rover has scooped up samples of the rocks there for future study.

“It could absolutely be possible that evidence for life on Mars is sitting in those tubes,” Stack Morgan said. “So if you want to answer that question, you have to bring them back.”

Hinging the justification for sample return on the possibility of finding life carries a huge risk of disappointment from the public if that isn’t found. “It is sexy to say we’re going to look for life,” Byrne said. “But it is risky unless you know you’re going to find it.”

If you look at the history of missions like the Viking probes in the 1970s or the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite , which caused a media uproar when it was initially thought to contain evidence of Martian life in the 1990s, you can see otherwise successful research that has carried the stigma of disappointment because it didn’t find smoking gun evidence of life.

And there are plenty of reasons to advocate for Mars samples that aren’t related to searching for life. A recent meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) focused on science goals other than the search for life that could be accomplished using samples. Samples could inform our understanding of when and how the Mars climate changed from being somewhat Earth-like to the dry, cold conditions we see today; the properties of the dust that coats much of the planet; and how the inner planets were bombarded by asteroids in the early period of the Solar System.

The value of potential samples isn’t only limited to understanding Mars, either. “Many, if not all, of the things we learn from samples at Mars inform our understanding of the evolution of our Solar System and, by extension, give us better ideas of how exoplanets may form and evolve around other stars,” said Vicky Hamilton, the steering committee chair for the MEPAG group.

A stepping stone to human exploration?

While the scientific community is interested in studying samples from Mars, much of the public has a stronger desire to see people stand on the surface of another planet. Human exploration of Mars has been a dream for decades, and it could be feasible within the next 50 to 100 years. (Elon Musk’s inflated claims aside, putting humans on Mars within a timescale of decades is possible, although it would require massive amounts of money.)

NASA seems aware of the public hunger for human exploration, and the agency has positioned both its Artemis Moon program and the MSR mission as paving the way for astronauts to visit Mars. Dewayne Washington, NASA’s MSR senior communications manager, said that bringing Mars samples back to Earth would prepare the agency for human exploration by providing information on the safety of the Mars environment, developing technologies like launch and landing of large masses, and developing sterilization techniques.

Certainly, one of the biggest challenges for human exploration is safely landing on and launching from Mars, and learning how to do this with samples can only help with that goal. However, not everyone is convinced that using robots to convey samples or sending astronauts to the Moon is really helpful in furthering human exploration of Mars.

“I do wonder why people feel the need to justify these very important and valuable things in terms of being a step to something else,” Hecht said. “You wouldn’t open a bicycle factory so you could learn how to build cars.”

One suggestion for making the MSR mission more affordable is to combine it with the Artemis Moon program, such as perhaps sending samples from Mars to the planned lunar Gateway space station rather than directly back to Earth. But Hecht isn’t convinced that would solve the problem. “I don’t really see it,” he said, as including an additional rendezvous “just adds complexity.”

Onto the next mission

Questions about the details aside, there is strong motivation to make it happen. “Even though Mars has been the focus of research for several decades now, we have truly only scratched the surface,” Stack Morgan said. “You’re not going to answer some of the most fundamental, basic questions about Mars until we get those samples back in our labs here on Earth.”

The motivation is not only because of the potential scientific value. There’s also the fact that the time, effort, and money ( over $2.7 billion ) has already been spent to send Perseverance to Mars to collect and seal samples and to leave them on the surface ready to be returned to Earth.

That money “has already been spent,” Hecht pointed out, so it would be wasteful to not see the mission through: “You might find plenty of folks in the planetary science community who would grumble about the path we’ve taken, but I don’t think you would find many who would argue that, having come so far, we should pull the plug now.”

Scientists also have their eyes on the future, considering what the next big target might be after Mars. “This should be the first of these projects for the planetary community, not the last,” Byrne said. Currently, there are around 40 planetary science-related NASA missions, but scientists envision a fleet of hundreds of missions exploring not only the inner Solar System planets but also beyond to the outer planets and other targets like moons or asteroids — not only orbiting these objects but also landing on them.

Our understanding of how planets form and develop and the range of conditions that exist on them has exploded in recent decades, looking not only at bodies within our Solar System but also exoplanets beyond. And technology is rapidly developing to allow more of these wildly ambitious plans to move within the realm of possibility.

“What if we want to return a sample from Enceladus to Earth? Or what if we want to rove on Venus? And drill through the ice shell of Europa? Or put a fleet of spacecraft out to Neptune and bring a bit of Triton home?” Byrne said. These places may or may not be habitable, but the potential for discovery exists beyond only searching for life: “Let’s explore these worlds for the sake of understanding the universe.”

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ILM Level 2 Assignment Answers: ILM 8601-203 Example

Want to unlock success with exemplary ILM Level 2 Assignment tasks and answers, exemplified by ILM 8601-203? This blog showcases an adept analysis of this assignment by weighing the pros and cons of teamwork. Let's dive in to get insights into ILM Level 2 Assignment Answers. It will also help you excel in your ILM Level 2 assessment.

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Are you ready to unlock the secrets of effective Leadership? Aspiring Leaders and seasoned professionals alike are constantly seeking avenues to enhance their skills and make a profound impact within their organisations. With ILM Level 2 Assignment Answers, you can get access to in-depth knowledge and insights designed to elevate your Leadership capabilities and propel your career forward. 

In this blog, we will present exemplary details of the ILM 8601-203, which delves into the nuances of team dynamics. In addition, it includes the details associated with the pros and cons of teamwork within organisational contexts. Through meticulous analysis and strategic thinking, we will demonstrate how to craft insightful ILM Level 2 Assignment Answers that meet the rigorous standards of such qualifications. 

Table of Contents 

1) What is an ILM assignment? 

2) ILM 8601-203 task 1: Team dynamics 

3) ILM 8601-203 task 2: Team pros & cons 

4) How to pass the assignment? 

5) Are all assignments the same? 

6) Conclusion 

What is an ILM assignment? 

The Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) offers a range of qualifications designed to enhance Leadership and Management skills. ILM assignments form an integral part of these qualifications, allowing learners to apply theoretical knowledge to practical scenarios and demonstrate their understanding of key concepts.  

ILM 8601-203 task 1: Team dynamics 

Task 1 of ILM 8601-203 training is focused on team dynamics within the work organisation. The course entails an in-depth study of the aspects that impact team performance, which include communication styles, Leadership dynamics, and conflict resolution techniques. A study of case stories and guiding principles gives learners a deeper understanding of the factors that make a team perform well. Let's explain its task components:  

1) Describe how teams differ from groups at work. 

The teams and groups in the workplace have major variations in certain critical parameters. The distinguishing characteristic of a team is that everyone has a shared purpose and goals, they are interdependent, and they are mutually accountable for the results. Teams engage in close collaboration to achieve specific goals, while a group functions more autonomously without unified objectives. 

2) Describe the characteristics of a successful team. 

Teamwork that brings success to an organisation exhibit the list of features. They are goal-oriented, as well as responsible for promoting collaborations and diverse opinions. High-performing teams display flexibility, robustness, and the readiness to implement progress in a collective way. 

3) Describe the stages of team development using a recognised model. 

Teams typically progress through stages of development. Those stages include forming, where team members get acquainted and establish goals; storming, where conflicts arise as roles and responsibilities are clarified.  

It also includes norming, where cohesion and cooperation develop; performing, where the team achieves high levels of productivity; and adjourning, where the team disbands after completing its objectives. 

Advance your Leader ship journey by registering in our ILM Level 2 Certificate in Leader ship and Team Skills - join us now!  

ILM 8601-203 task 2: Team pros & cons 

Task 2 of ILM 8601-203 delves deeper into the pros and cons of team-based approaches within organisations. Learners are tasked with evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of working in teams, considering factors such as collaboration, innovation, decision-making, and potential challenges. This task encourages critical thinking and reflective analysis, enabling learners to identify strategies for maximising team effectiveness.  

1) Identify the responsibilities of the team members. 

Team members serve as the driving force behind a project's progress and achievement. Let's explore the key responsibilities that define their contributions to collaborative endeavours: 

a) Team members actively participate in team activities and discussions 

b) They contribute their skills, knowledge, and expertise towards achieving team goals 

c) They communicate openly and transparently with fellow team members, sharing information and feedback. 

d) They adhere to agreed-upon deadlines and deliverables, ensuring timely completion of tasks. 

e) They support and encourage their team members, fostering a positive and collaborative team environment. 

2) Describe the benefits of teamwork. 

Effective teamwork is a way more than just individuals working together. Let's talk about their advantages in the following points:  

a) Teams bind individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, thereby fostering creativity and innovation. 

b) Collective input and brainstorming lead to better-informed decisions and solutions. 

c) By pooling resources and skills, teams can accomplish tasks more efficiently and effectively. 

d) Working in teams provides emotional support, motivation, and a sense of belonging. 

e) Teamwork offers opportunities for learning and growth as members share knowledge and expertise with each other. 

3) List the disadvantages of working with a team 

Working within a team environment also comes with its own set of challenges. Here are some of the disadvantages of working with a team: 

a) Potential for conflicts: Differences in opinions, personalities, and working styles can lead to conflicts and disagreements. 

b) Coordination challenges: Coordinating schedules, tasks, and responsibilities among team members can be complex and time-consuming. 

c) Free-riding: Some team members may not contribute equally to the team's efforts, leading to uneven workload distribution. 

d) Groupthink: Pressure to conform to the group's consensus may stifle creativity and independent thinking. 

e) Decision-making delays: Building consensus and reaching decisions collectively may prolong the decision-making process. 

Boost your career opportunities and transform into a vibrant Leader by joining our ILM Level 2 Certificate in Team Leading !  

How to pass the assignment? 

Being able to handle the ILM task in a proper manner means putting much time and effort into preparation and paying attention to detail. Students are required to go through the task description, get acquainted with the theory of concepts, and use critical thinking skills to analyse and appraise the given quotes. Time Management skills, focused communication, and an understanding of the expected results from the assignment are all things that are necessary for a successful assignment. 

Are all assignments the same? 

While the overall structure of ILM assignments may follow a similar format, the specific tasks and requirements can vary depending on the qualification and unit being studied. It's crucial for learners to carefully review the assignment brief and understand the unique expectations for each task. Tailoring responses to address specific criteria and providing relevant examples and evidence can enhance the quality and effectiveness of assignment submissions. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, navigating an ILM Level 2 Assignment, such as ILM 8601-203, requires a strategic approach and a detailed understanding of the task requirements. Exploring ILM assignments becomes an achievable goal for aspiring Leaders and Managers. By mastering the ILM Level 2 Assignment Answers, learners can progress towards achieving their ILM qualifications.  

Cultivate robust team interactions through our I LM Level 2 Award in Leader ship and Team Skills Training - secure your place today!  

Frequently Asked Questions

The ILM Level 2 Team Leader qualification equips individuals with essential Leader ship skills to effectively manage teams and achieve organisational goals. It covers areas like communication, motivation, and problem-solving, preparing pupils for Leader ship roles in various industries.  

ILM is widely recognised and respected in the industry, offering valuable qualifications that enhance professional development and career prospects. By focusing on practical skills and real-world applications, ILM provides individuals with the tools and knowledge needed to succeed in their roles as T eam Leader s.  

The Knowledge Academy takes global learning to new heights, offering over 30,000 online courses across 490+ locations in 220 countries. This expansive reach ensures accessibility and convenience for learners worldwide.   

Alongside our diverse Online Course Catalogue, encompassing 17 major categories, we go the extra mile by providing a plethora of free educational Online Resources like News updates, Blogs , videos, webinars, and interview questions. Tailoring learning experiences further, professionals can maximise value with customisable Course Bundles of TKA .   

The Knowledge Academy’s Knowledge Pass , a prepaid voucher, adds another layer of flexibility, allowing course bookings over a 12-month period. Join us on a journey where education knows no bounds.   

The Knowledge Academy offers various ILM Level 2 Courses , including the ILM Level 2 Certificate in Leader ship and Team Skills, ILM Level 2 Certificate in Team Leading, and ILM Level 2 Award in Leader ship and Team Skills Training. These courses cater to different skill levels, providing comprehensive insights into the ILM Level 3 Assignment Answers .   

Our ILM Leader ship & Management Blogs cover a range of topics related to ILM Level 2 Certification, offering valuable resources, best practices, and industry insights. Whether you are a beginner or looking to advance your ILM Leader ship & Management Skills, The Knowledge Academy's diverse courses and informative blogs have got you covered.  

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