Simple Project Budget Template
Download a Simple Project Budget Template for
Excel
|
Microsoft Word
| Google Sheets
When to Use This Template: Use this simple project budget template to plan and track task-level costs across labor, materials, and fixed expenses. It’s a great tool for project managers who need a clear, line-by-line breakdown of budgeted versus actual spend.
Notable Template Features: Editable sections allow you to input task status, dates, labor hours, unit costs, and fixed costs such as travel and equipment. Built-in variance tracking highlights over/under for each task and provides a running subtotal to keep your entire project budget in view.
Find additional project proposal templates and learn more about getting the most out of your project-budget proposals.
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Project Management Budget Template
Download a Project Management Budget Template for
Microsoft Word
|
Adobe PDF
| Google Docs
When to Use This Template: Use this comprehensive project budget plan to define, track, and communicate the full financial structure of a project. It’s ideal for project managers who need a formalized document for budget planning, stakeholder alignment, and cost control procedures.
Notable Template Features: The template includes pre-built sections to document spending thresholds, cost variance plans, estimation methods, and reporting metrics. Customize fields to capture work breakdown structure (WBS) details, cost baselines, and change control processes — ensuring financial accountability from kickoff through delivery.
Construction Project Budget Template
Download a Construction Project Budget Template for
Excel
| Google Sheets
When to Use This Template: Use this detailed budget tracker to plan, manage, and monitor costs across every phase of a construction project, from site prep and utilities to framing, finishes, and inspections. It’s the perfect tool for contractors, builders, or project managers who oversee complex builds.
Notable Template Features: The template is organized by construction phase, with sections to estimate labor hours, hourly rates, materials, and unit costs. The tool automatically calculates budgeted versus actual totals and flags over/under amounts by task. It’s also fully customizable for residential, commercial, or specialty construction work.
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 a Project Proposal Budget Template for
Excel
| Google Sheets
When to Use This Template: Plan a project’s financial scope before kickoff with this template. Teams can use it to create detailed budget proposals for internal approvals, client presentations, or funding requests.
Notable Template Features: The template includes a structured WBS column, task status, and planned versus actual timelines alongside labor, material, and fixed cost inputs. Use the subtotals and under/over budget columns to compare estimates with real costs, so you can course-correct early and align stakeholder expectations.
Check out these event budget templates for options to help with budgeting once a proposal is approved.
Excel Project Budget Control Template
Download the Project Budget Control Template for Excel
When to Use This Template: Select this template when you need to closely monitor project expenses against budgeted amounts. It works well for controlling budgets across multiple phases or related projects.
Notable Template Features: This template tracks individual task and subtask costs across labor, materials, and fixed categories. Subtotals and built-in under/over calculations give you instant visibility into cost variances, which helps you maintain control over both individual line items and total project spend.
Use these business budget templates to keep project spending on track.
Project Budget Definition Spreadsheet
Download a Project Budget Definition Spreadsheet for
Excel
| Google Sheets
When to Use This Template: Project managers can use this template to plan or track project budgets with detailed monthly and quarterly breakdowns of revenue, expenses, and balance sheet metrics.
Notable Template Features: The template outlines key profit and loss (P&L) categories such as revenue, costs of goods sold (COGS), labor, and admin costs, alongside cash flow tracking and balance sheet insights. Easily compare budgeted, actual, and previous-year figures across each month and quarter to evaluate financial performance and keep your project aligned with strategic goals.
Project Expense Tracking Template
Download a Project Expense Tracking Template for
Excel
| Google Sheets | Smartsheet
When to Use This Template: This template is best for teams that are new to proposal budgeting or need guidance on how to structure a detailed project budget with example data.
Notable Template Features: The template comes prefilled with sample tasks, costs, and timelines to help you get started quickly. Enter labor, material, and fixed expenses for each task or subtask, compare proposed versus actual costs, and track variances in real time. It’s a great tool for learning how to build and manage a project budget from scratch.
This cost estimate templates article features additional tools and information on getting the most out of your project budgeting.
Excel Multiple Project Budget Gantt Chart Template
Download the Multiple Project Budget Gantt Chart Template for Excel
When to Use This Template: Use this tracking budget to view performance across multiple projects in parallel. It’s a good solution for project managers who handle complex portfolios.
Notable Template Features: The template includes dedicated task sections for each project, with columns for labor, materials, and fixed costs. You’ll also find automatic budget versus actual variance calculations, and visual bar charts that clearly highlight over/under performance by task or project. This tool makes it easy to identify issues at a glance and keep stakeholders aligned.
Project Budget Breakdown Template
Download a Project Budget Breakdown Template for
Excel
|
Adobe PDF
| Google Sheets
When to Use This Template: Use this template when you need a visual breakdown of project costs by category. It’s particularly useful for grant proposals, nonprofit projects, or internal budget approvals.
Notable Template Features: This template is organized by category (staffing, equipment, utilities, travel, and professional services) with editable line items and subtotals. Use it to itemize, track, and roll up estimated costs into a single total proposal amount for clear reporting and stakeholder review.
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. A template helps track the project budget at the task level. A project budget template can alert you when tasks run over budget.
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.
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