How to create a budget template and small business budget basics.

No matter how big your business is — whether you’re a start-up, already operating as a small business, a sole trader, tradesperson, or a freelancer — or it’s crucial to manage your finances effectively. Creating and/or using an existing small business budget template is the first step and an invaluable tool to help you manage and monitor your expected income and expenses. Read on to learn some small business budget basics, and how to create a template for business budgets.

What you’ll learn

• Small business budget basics
• What to include in a small business budget
• Why use PDFs for small business budget templates
• How to create a small business budget template
• Tips for managing a small business budget

Small business budget basics.

The basic elements of a small business budget involve all sources of income, all types of expenses, your tax obligations, and your financial goals.

Know your business and get advice when you need to.

As a small business owner or sole trader, you should have an understanding of the basics of these aspects of running a business when you prepare your small business budget — and be prepared to seek professional advice when and if you need to. Accountants and/or financial advisors will be able to help with any trickier aspects involved in responsibly managing the finances of a small business, your tax obligations, and any specifics required within your industry or sector.

Work out your income and expenses using existing data.

To create a small business budget, you will need to estimate your future income and expenses. Base your estimates on historical data that you already have available — previous sales, quotes from suppliers, and industry averages. Use market research if you are a brand-new small business to get estimates. You will have some costs that are fixed, but others that are variable and may fluctuate throughout the year depending on your industry or the season.

Calculate your income and expenses over regular timeframes.

Monthly budgets are the most common for small businesses. However, you may choose to create a spreadsheet to calculate your estimated income and expenses on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and/or annual basis. This can be particularly helpful if you have some annual expenses, and some paid at other intervals. You can then use columns with calculations to break annual costs into monthly amounts or see at a glance what an annual expense costs your business per month, week, or quarter. You can also use this to create separate weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual business budgets for your small business.

What to include in a small business budget.

Creating a small business budget will involve identifying and including all your expected income and expenses.

Income.

Start by identifying and listing all your sources of income. Income sources could include, but are not limited to, your income from —

• Sales
• Services
• Grants
• Loans
• Investments
• Interest on bank account balances
• Any other revenue streams.

Expenses.

Group your expenses into fixed and variable categories. These may include, but are not limited to —

• Fixed expenses.
  Fixed expenses are those that you expect to remain relatively constant each month. For example —
  • Rent or mortgage for your business premises.
  • Salaries and/or drawings for yourself and any employees (depending on your business structure.
  • Utilities such as phone, internet, electricity, or gas.
  • Bank fees.
  • Software or application subscriptions.
  • Loan repayments.
  • Insurance premiums (e.g. public/business liability, professional indemnity, buildings and contents, equipment and tools, business interruption, accident insurance, etc.)
  • An emergency fund.
• Variable expenses.
  Variable expenses are those business costs that may fluctuate, depending on how busy your business is, during the year. For example —
  • Tax on your estimated income
  • Office supplies
  • Marketing
  • Travel
  • Delivery and/or courier charges
  • Maintenance of equipment, tools, or your business premises

Why use PDFs for small business budget templates?

If you’re wondering why use PDFs for small business budget templates, when you may have the power of a spreadsheet program or accounting software at your fingertips — that’s a worthy question. There are good reasons for which type of application you choose to use in isolation, or in combination with others.

With PDF budget templates for small businesses, you can —

• Easily share your budget safely and securely.
  Whether you want to share your budget with a business advisor, your bank, or trusted employees that you are collaborating on creating your budget, PDFs are safe and secure. They are easily sent between devices without losing any formatting. You can set PDF password protection to prevent others from opening your budget PDF file and making any alterations to content.

• Include budget calculations in a PDF file.
  PDFs have a lot of powerful features. Among these is the ability to add calculations into form fields within your PDF. You can add, multiple, work out averages, minimums, maximums, and more.

• Edit and review your budget.
  Use PDF editing tools to not only edit your budget, but also review and make notes, and add comments and annotations. This is particularly helpful when you’re reviewing and revising a budget in preparation for the following year to remind yourself of changes, fluctuations, and any unexpected expenses that may have occurred.

• Get budget sign-off and approval.
  If you need approval from business partners, your bank or interested parties, you can easily include a field to request a signature in a PDF.

• Convert budget spreadsheet to and from PDF.
  You can convert Excel files to PDF and convert from PDF to Excel as and when you want to.

• Combine your budget with other business documents.
  Business budgets are often included in other types of business documents and reports. Use the tools in Adobe Acrobat to manipulate your pages from different documents. Drop your budget into your other business reports and documents by using PDF tools such as the ability to add pages to a PDF, merge PDF files, extract PDF pages, and more.

How to create a small business budget template.

You can create your small business budget directly in Adobe Acrobat, explore the free templates on Adobe Express that you can customize to meet your needs, or create your budget in another file format and then convert it to PDF.

Remember to include —

• Dates — whether monthly, quarterly, annually, or for your financial year.
• Categories — list all your income and expense categories.
• Estimated costs — include amounts for each category you have identified.
• Actual costs — include a column where you can add your actual costs
• Differences — include a column to calculate the difference between your estimated and actual costs.

Tips for managing a small business budget.

You’ve taken the time to create a small business budget, so keep up the time and effort to manage how you track your income and expenses. Doing so will help you maintain financial stability alongside your daily operations.

Some tips for managing a small business budget include —

• Set realistic goals from the get-go.
  Make sure any goals you set for your business are realistic. Goals might include performance indicators such as revenue targets, profit margins, or reducing your costs and expenses.

• Consider seasonal variations.
  Many businesses experience seasonal fluctuations. If yours is one of them, adjust your budget and allocate your resources strategically to cover your expenses during slower periods.

• Keep your budget numbers up to date.
  Remember to update your budget with your actual expenses and income regularly. Make it part of your routine so that you are always on top of what is coming in and going out and can make adjustments if you need to.

• Review regularly.
  Schedule regular reviews of your budget to ensure it still aligns with your overall business goals and business environment.

• Be flexible and responsive.
  Businesses often change and evolve. So, be flexible with your budget and adapt it as your business evolves. Respond to any changes to your internal operations or the market or sector you provide goods or services.

Related content.

Keep learning! Check out some of our other articles to help busy small business owners learn how to use PDFs effectively.

• Solve Small Business Document Management Challenges with PDF Document Management
• How to be Operationally Efficient as a One-person Business
• PDF Tools for Freelancers: How to Make PDFs Work for You and Your Clients