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Free Excel workbook · planning

Build your budget the way it should be built — together.

A working budget model where every department head fills one simple tab, and the whole organization rolls up into a board-ready one-pager. The collaborative budgeting you're told you need paid software for — in a spreadsheet that opens clean on any machine.

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Excel · .xlsx · formulas only, no macros · ~36 KB
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Download the Collaborative Budget Builder
Start on the “Setup” tab, then send each department head their own tab.
The board summary tab: total revenue, expense, surplus, conservative surplus, program expense percentage, months of reserve, plus expenses-by-function and revenue-vs-expense charts.
The board summary — generated automatically from every department's tab.
The problem

Budgeting doesn't break when you build it. It breaks when you assemble it.

Most annual budgets die in the consolidation: weeks of chasing spreadsheets from department heads, then hand-patching them into one master file — Budget_Final_v3_Approved.xlsx — where nobody's sure which version is live and every copy-paste is a chance to drop a number.

This workbook fixes the assembly. Six department slots, one tab each, rolling into a single consolidated view. Department heads only ever touch their own tab; the program ratios, reserve math, and restricted-vs-unrestricted split happen automatically where they can't break them.

What it shows your board

One page instead of twelve tabs.

01

The whole org, rolled up

Every department's personnel and expenses consolidate into total revenue, total expense, and surplus or deficit — split program / admin / fundraising and restricted / unrestricted, automatically.

02

The ratios boards actually ask about

Program expense %, overhead %, personnel %, and months of operating reserve — each computed for you and flagged against common watchdog benchmarks.

03

A conservative scenario in one input

Set a haircut on your probability-weighted pipeline and watch a balanced budget reveal what it really is if part of that revenue doesn't land. The number boards never see until it's too late.

How it's built

CFO-grade, not a generic template.

Driver-based personnel (FTE × base × benefits) Probability-weighted revenue Restricted vs. unrestricted throughout Functional expense split 6 department slots Guided dropdowns — no typos Formulas only · no macros Opens on locked-down org machines

Stop assembling. Start consolidating.

Get the workbook