Balance sheets
Create a free customized balance sheet online from a range of customizable templates...
Business budgets
Create free business budgets online to efficiently manage and review cash flow and expenses with Microsoft Excel.
Power smart financial decisions with small business budget templates
Easily customize a range of free business budget templates in Excel to monitor income and expenses. Estimate your expected revenue and costs for a period, then compare your plan to actuals with Excel formulas. Link spreadsheets to consolidate multiple budgets into a centralized view.
Free monthly budget templates
Choose from easy-to-customize templates for monthly time periods.
Free cash flow templates
Use cash flow budgeting Excel templates to track how funds move over time.
Use business budgeting templates to save time
Select from a range of free customizable monthly, annual business budget or expense tracker templates. Update the time period, income streams, and expenses as well as utilize separate columns or sheets to track department specific financials.
Apply core budgeting functions
Estimate revenue and track expenses with the help of built-in accounting and finance formulas. Calculate accurate financial forecasting based on your sales volume, service hours, and completed projects to effectively visualize the business incomings. Detail and manage operating business costs like rent and salaries as well as track capital expenditures when upgrading equipment or investing in new systems.
Link spreadsheets for centralized data management
Perform more complex budgeting tasks by linking sheets in single or across multiple workbooks. This allows separate teams to manage their respective budgets while maintaining a centralized file with aligned calculation formulas. This allows you to consolidate data in a master view that updates automatically when cells change in linked sheets.
Compare budget to actual finances
Use Excel variance analysis in budget spreadsheets to compare forecasts with actuals. Visualize analysis with charts and graphs designed for small business reporting to understand the data at a glance. Uncover patterns in costs or revenue over time.
Use Copilot for budget creation and analysis
Start by asking Copilot in Excel to create a type of budget in a blank sheet. Add financial data and have Copilot suggest formulas or formatting options for the statement. Get help setting up a range of different financial analysis insights including scenario, break even, trend analysis, and variance based on your added data.
Plan scenarios to set the right goals
Use What-If analysis tools in Excel to explore results between different sets of data. Create a scenario to store alternate values for best-case, optimistic, or worst-case versions of your budget. Use Goal Seek to see what your budget would have to look like to get a desired result.
Customize spreadsheet colors and share
Polish budgets with brand colors and logos when you’re ready to share. Control who can access and edit your workbook via the permission settings. Save reports as PDF to present digitally, print, or share as an email attachment. Share your budget report with stakeholders and team members via OneDrive links. Highlight specific data points within a presentation with embedded data tables from Excel into PowerPoint to share data that stays up to date.
Helpful reasons to use business budget spreadsheets
Small business owners: managing expenses and cash flow.
Agencies: overseeing project costs.
Startup founders: tracking product development costs.
Freelancers and consultants: managing expenses and quarterly taxes.
Entrepreneurs: tracking ad spend and monthly income.
How to build a business budget in Excel
Choose a business budget template or ask Copilot to generate a budget table
Add columns for monthly, quarterly, or annual budgeting time periods
Add rows for revenue streams, fixed expenses, variable expenses, capital expenditures, and taxes
Total net profit or loss or projected income with formulas
Add actuals and variance columns with conditional formatting to track performance over time
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Frequently asked questions
What are common categories to include in a business budget?
Some of the most common business budget categories include revenue, operating expenses, cost of goods sold, marketing, payroll, utilities, rent, taxes, and insurance. If you’re a new business owner, you can ask Copilot in Excel to suggest categories that apply to your industry to get a head start on your budget.
How to review a business budget?
Comparing actuals to projections is one of the main ways of reviewing a business budget. You can analyze variances to spot issues and compare time periods to uncover trends in cash flow or expenses.
What are the most useful formulas in Excel for business budgeting?
Excel has many useful business budgeting formulas like SUM, AVERAGE, SUMIF, IF, and VLOOKUP. You can use more advanced accountancy formulas like DB to calculate depreciation and IPMT to get the interest portion of a loan payment. Ask Copilot to suggest formulas that best apply to the financial information in your workbook.
How to create a monthly budget in Excel?
Start with a monthly budget template in Excel or build yours with help from Copilot in Excel. Create columns for planned and actual data by month. Add categories of income and expenses, then total the lines with the SUM function to see net profit.