Operating Budget Template
Download Operating Budget Template
When to Use This Template: Use this standard operating budget template to track revenue, expenses, and overall net income month by month. It’s ideal for businesses that want to calculate the cost of goods sold (COGS) and gain insight into the financial health of daily operations.
Notable Template Features: This template includes fields for unit volume, pricing, variable and fixed costs, depreciation, and amortization to help you build a comprehensive view of your operating budget. It also includes an integrated expense analysis dashboard to provide a visual summary of planned versus actual performance.
Small Business Operating Budget Template
Download a Small Business Operating Budget Template for
Excel | Google Sheets | Adobe PDF
When to Use This Template: Small business owners can use this operating budget template to track monthly product or service revenue and monitor profitability against goals. It’s especially useful for reviewing income and expense trends in one place.
Notable Template Features: This template features line-by-line sections to capture units sold, COGS, unexpected expenses, and total costs. It also includes a summary view that shows your net income, which will help you stay aligned with financial targets.
For additional templates tailored to small business needs, explore our full collection of free small business budget templates to plan, track, and optimize your business finances.
Simple Operating Budget Template
Download a Simple Operating Budget Template for
When to Use This Template: Use this simple operating budget template to manage personal or household finances and determine whether the current income can meet monthly obligations. Use it as a tool to identify savings opportunities or budgeting shortfalls.
Notable Template Features: This template includes fields for projected versus actual income, savings, housing, and daily expenses, so you can monitor spending at a glance. The template is also fully customizable to reflect your personal budgeting needs.
Annual Operating Budget Template
Download a Annual Operating Budget Template for
When to Use This Template: Use this annual operating budget template to assess year-over-year income and expenses for your business or organization. It’s a great tool to identify trends and forecast future financial performance.
Notable Template Features: This template calculates monthly net income based on salary, interest income, refunds, and total expenses. The clean structure helps highlight shortfalls and maintain consistent tracking throughout the year.
For more options, explore our curated list of free annual business budget templates to help you plan, track, and compare your company’s yearly financial performance.
School Operating Budget Template
Download a School Operating Budget Template for
When to Use This Template: This school operating budget template is ideal for administrators who track revenue sources and instructional expenses. Use it to avoid shortfalls and maintain fiscal accountability across academic programs.
Notable Template Features: This template features editable fields for student and staff counts, average salaries, and instructional costs, so you can calculate total expenditures. Then add revenue from grants, fees, and local aid, and compare funding to actual spend.
Nonprofit Operating Budget Template
Download a Nonprofit Operating Budget Template for
When to Use This Template: Nonprofits can use this template to compare year-to-date revenue with expenses and ensure responsible financial management. It’s perfect for organizations supported by grants, donations, or membership income.
Notable Template Features: Track income from foundations, government contracts, fundraising, and program fees. The template also includes pre-filled categories for staff salaries, insurance, and fundraising expenses to provide a clear picture of budget versus actuals.
For templates tailored to nonprofit financial planning, browse our collection of nonprofit budget templates for annual budgeting, grant tracking, program funding, and more.
Monthly Operating Budget Template
Download a Monthly Operating Budget Template for
Excel | Word | Google Docs
When to Use This Template: Use a monthly operating budget to monitor income, taxes, and personal or business expenses on a recurring basis. This template is a flexible tool for identifying where spending adjustments may be needed.
Notable Template Features: The template includes space to note wages, tax withholdings, and common expense categories, which makes monthly budgeting straightforward. Additionally, customize the rows to tailor the template to match your financial priorities.
For project-based operating budget templates, check out our comprehensive roundup of free project budget templates.
Restaurant Operating Budget Template
Download a Restaurant Operating Budget Template for
Excel | Word | Google Sheets
When to Use This Template: Restaurant owners and catering managers can use this operating budget template to compare forecasted and actual costs across all service areas. Use it as a tool to improve profitability and control overhead.
Notable Template Features: This template features line-item tracking for facility fees, labor, design, and bar services, so you can get granular insight into food service spending. The tailored format helps you assess margins and adjust forecasts as needed.
Startup Operating Budget Template
Download a Startup Operating Budget Template for
When to Use This Template: Startups can use this template to calculate how much funding is required to support monthly and one-time costs. It’s ideal for building a realistic first-year operating plan.
Notable Template Features: The template includes dedicated sections for startup costs, recurring expenses, and funding sources for a clear view of operational needs. Early-stage businesses can use it to keep financial goals in sight.
Explore our list of free startup budget templates designed to help new businesses plan, track, and manage their early-stage finances.
What Is an Operating Budget Template?
An operating budget template allows you to compare expenditures, such as cost of goods sold, with revenue or other income sources. It’s a great tool to gain clarity on your income and expenses, so you can determine your business’s viability.
A template also allows you to determine the overhead and administrative costs related to manufacturing products or providing services, in order to determine how close you are to meeting your projected budget. Operating budgets typically provide a way to evaluate expenditures versus revenue on a quarterly basis, but you can also assess feasibility through week-by-week, month-by-month, or year-by-year periods.
Using a template is a great way to streamline the process of assessing your financial health. Additionally, the preset criteria in a template can help take the guesswork out of the process.
Components of an Operating Budget
An operating budget allows you to compare expenditures with income. To account for all operational costs, an operating budget includes product volume, price, revenue, costs, net income, and more.
- Volume: The number of products or services you intend to provide or have provided, for any given period.
- Price: The price per unit or service you budget for clients.
- Revenue: Project and actual revenue generated by the number of products and services provided, along with their associated costs.
- Total Revenue: The auto-tallied volume of products or services, multiplied by their price.
- Variable Costs: Fluctuating expenditures that vary monthly or annually.
- Fixed Costs: Set costs that you can confidently forecast due to their lack of monthly or annual variation.
- Net Income: The money your business has available to spend, minus any taxes, expenses, and costs.
Keep in mind that while many expenditures are recurring, you need to simultaneously consider one-time costs. Seasonal expenses will also impact an operating budget, as will any promotional events for which you plan to spend more on advertising or marketing.
Annual operating budget data (projected vs. actuals) offers a long-term picture of a company’s continued operations. However, it’s often the month-by-month insights provided by an operating budget that exposes how unexpected costs affect the bottom line. Having short-term insight into initial projections can protect you from the surprise of unaccounted-for operating costs. Monthly comparisons of expenditures vs. revenue provide a surgical perspective that, once incorporated, informs the successive progress of your future operating budget considerations.
Discover a Better Way to Manage an Operating Budget
Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change.
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.