Are you still working on your budget for next year? I’ve just updated my budget template, and added a page on my website, to describe how it works.
The old version was created in 2002, so it was definitely time for an update! This is a simple budget layout, but might give you some ideas for working on your own workbook.
The Menu Sheet
There is a menu sheet at the front of the workbook, with two named cells – Location and Start Date. The information that you enter in those cells is used on the other sheets in the workbook.
There are four navigation buttons, to take you to the data entry sheets and the report sheets. And those sheets have a Menu button, to bring you back to the menu sheet.
Data Entry Sheets
When you’re in the planning phase, you can enter your budget categories and forecasts on the Forecast sheet.
Later, when you have Actual numbers, you can enter those on the Actual worksheet.
Year To Date Reports
To see how things are going, you can check the Year to Date report, which shows the Actual amounts, up to the current month, and Forecast amounts for the remaining months.
Conditional formatting colours the columns with Actual data, to it’s easy to see where it’s been entered.
Variance Report
The final report shows the variance between the forecast amounts and the actual amounts. Again, conditional formatting colours the columns with Actual data.
Download the Sample File
To see the details, and to download the sample file, please visit the Forecast vs Actual – Variance page on my Contextures website. The file is in Excel xlsm format, and the workbook contains macros.
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After going through all details provided in excel sheet, I got the variance calculation of actual and forecast numbers.
It was disappointing! Actually, when I started to read this article, I was thinking to get some valuable inputs about the process of budgeting and intricacies of budget.
If you have some excel stuff related to budgeting, please share with me.