IT Budgeting Template
Download the free IT budgeting template to streamline the IT budgeting process and gain confidence in the output.
- Created from IT budgeting best practices
- Automates the calculation of fully-burdened employee costs
- IT categories broken out into discrete entries that roll up to summary view
How to create an IT budgeting spreadsheet
Spreadsheets are brilliant tools for storing and showing data but they aren’t a purpose-built solution for IT budgeting. We created this IT budgeting template to help—using IT budgeting best practices to streamline the IT budgeting process.
Use this IT budgeting template to:
- Reduce the hours spent on the IT budgeting process
- Limit manual spreadsheet wrangling that causes errors
- Provide better visibility into the true cost of IT
Stop wrangling spreadsheets
IT budgeting solutions rely on linked worksheets. You probably started off with a simple spreadsheet that overtime has adopted complication and multiple points of failure. And that’s assuming that you built the original budgeting solution. If you’ve inherited someone else’s budgeting solution, you are tasked with keeping it current while trying to put yourself in someone else’s head (“Seriously, what were they thinking when they built this?”).
This IT budgeting template breaks out IT categories into their own discrete budgeting entries and automatically rolls up into a summary view of a CCO’s budget.
A CCO doesn’t have to spend time wrangling their spreadsheets into a central view—this template does it for them.
Manage headcount, not abstract account numbers.
This template acknowledges that Cost Center Owners aren’t accountants. Homegrown budgeting solutions require CCOs to translate their resource needs into account-level detail. That’s time consuming and ripe for error—with compounded errors rolled-up to the corporate IT budget.
In this IT budgeting template, account-level detail is automatically calculated from headcount numbers. Fully-burdened employee costs (e.g., medical, insurance, bonuses, and legal) vary regionally and are error-prone when done manually. Use this template to tamp down the manual and amp up automation.
CapEx to OpEx
CCOs must build budgets in adherence to the Finance standards of translating CapEx spend into ongoing run costs. Different assets have different schedules, in-service dates aren’t uniform: this IT budgeting template automates depreciation schedule calculations.
Tracking contracts
This IT budgeting template embraces the fact that contract start dates do not align to the start of the financial year. CCOs needs their budgeting solution to capture rolling start dates for their contract portfolio—and automate the distribution of spend through the year.
What's the opportunity cost of spreadsheet budgeting?
No single source of truth
- Disparate spreadsheets feed errors into rolled-up plan.
- Email governance allows deviations from targets.
- Manual touch points compound errors.
Unable to plan multi-year
- Capitalization and amortization formulas require excessive maintenance.
- Single-year plans hide the full extent of contract spend commits.
- Known out year asset spend redundantly calculated every year.
No version control
- Plan owners overwhelmed by approval requests.
- Low confidence in version accuracy drives budget padding.
- Manual data wrangling increases length and lowers accuracy of process.
