2017 Guide to the top free small business budget templates
If it weren’t for spreadsheets, the personal computer would never have gained such rapid popularity, and budgeting is one of the tasks that is ideally suited for spreadsheets. At the same time, budgeting is one perhaps the most important tasks for small business owners.
These two facts give us the perfect marriage of software and task, and fortunately there are many excellent – and free – small business budget spreadsheet templates.
Tip: Ultimately you’ll want to track your budget via cloud-based accounting software, but for testing and comparing budget scenarios, there really isn’t any tool that tops a personal computer running a spreadsheet program loaded with a detailed small business budget template.
Here’s a quick overview of the best free small business budget templates currently available for download. I’ve provided thumbnail images to give you a feel for each one. For some people, aesthetics matter; others don’t care. Further, be sure to visit the websites of the ones that look like they would best fit your needs because sometimes the providers have other handy free small business templates available.
Note: I have not included expense or “startup” templates, and there are many good ones. I’ve focused on templates that force you to forecast income as well as expenses. At the end, I provide links to sites that have a good inventory of free small business spreadsheet templates, but where I couldn’t find an income and expense budget spreadsheet.
Scott’s Marketplace
Not only does Scott’s Marketplace offer a good free small business budget template, the accompanying article by Dwight Fujimoto walks you through its features and the best ways to use them to your advantage. The template itself uses three tabs within Excel: Budget Detail, Budget Summary, and Expense Summary. It breaks down categories into an extensive number of line items.
Smartsheet
The designers at Smartsheet put a lot of effort into making their small business budget spreadsheet look great as well as cover all the categories you’re likely to need…and some that look more like personal expenses than business expenses, such as souvenirs and pet boarding under the category of Vacation/Holiday. But it’s better to be more inclusive than leave things out, right?
Although Smartsheet provides an excellent free budget spreadsheet, the company markets paid services built around online collaboration, work management, and automation. You can create your budget spreadsheet on their website, for a price.
Capterra
Andrew Marder does a good job explaining how to use the Capterra small business budget spreadsheet in his article that accompanies the download. For an example, he uses the company John’s Ping Pong Balls…which, by the way, is posting great revenue figures for a local ping pong ball company!
The sheet is self is extremely detailed. It employs five tabs, the first of which is instructions. The others are YearlyBudget, MonthlyBudget, MonthlyActuals, and Overview.
Vertex
Vertex offers separate monthly and yearly small business budget spreadsheet templates. Expense categories aren’t quite as extensive as some others, however Vertex does something the others don’t: it provides separate tabs for product-based and service-based businesses. In fact, other sheets often do not include “cost of goods sold” as a budgeted expense item.
Other useful small business spreadsheet providers
Tidyform has several free business budget templates, but they require an email address prior to download. The others featured here do not have that requirement.
The SCORE as the Frugal Entrepreneur websites have a good assortment of free templates business.
Have you discovered a free small business budget template that we have not mentioned? Tell us in the comments sections below. We’ll check it out and include it if it’s good.