Budget vs. Actual: Variance by Line Item (Includes Cash Flow) (Excel XLSX)

You'd be surprised at how many small businesses fail to budget or budget incorrectly. You'd also be surprised at how much easier it is to make financial decisions about your business if you had a budget. This is a core practice of top business managers.

By using this template, you can shed some light on various aspects of your cash flow needs, potential cost or waste improvements, and not feel like you are flying blind when thinking about where your business has been, where it is going, and what decisions need to be made to achieve your business goals.

Granular is better in this case and based on some simple data entry, this template will highlight when you are over/under a given line item by month as well as show target goals with simple visualizations and conditional formatting. Start tracking, and stop guessing in order to optimize your profits and grow sustainably with better financial insight. It seems simple and not worthwhile, but after you begin, the benefits will emerge.

This budgeting template comes in two forms. Excel and Google Sheets. The Google Sheets version is a 12-month budget that has a few advanced analysis features, more expense slots, and conditional formatting.

The Excel version goes for 36 months, but has less analysis features.

In general, the way both work is an entry of up to 3 budgeted revenue streams and expenses per month. A mirror of that is also built for actuals. A final tab shows the variance percentage of every single line item by month and in total.

If an expense item is over budget, the cell will display as red and if a revenue item is under budget, the cell will be red. For the reverse, they will be green (lower expense than budget / higher revenue than budget).

The template was designed for simple use and is straightforward without any macros or complex formulas.