Annual Budget Template

Twelve-month operating budget with line-item categories, monthly cadence, and variance bands.

# Annual Operating Budget â FY[YYYY] **Prepared by:** [Finance lead] **Approved by:** [CEO / Board] **Last revised:** [date] ## 1. Assumptions Capture the macro and business assumptions the budget is built on. If any of these break, the budget needs a re-baseline conversation, not a line-item edit. - Revenue growth rate: [%] - Net retention: [%] - Gross margin: [%] - Headcount plan: [opening â closing] - Average fully-loaded comp: [$] - FX assumptions: [pairs + rates] - Inflation/cost-of-living factor: [%] ## 2. Revenue plan Monthly revenue plan by product line and by region. Distinguish "booked" (signed contracts), "committed" (verbal yes, paper pending), and "to-be-sold" (pipeline-dependent). Total to-be-sold should never exceed 3x the prior period's actual close rate. ## 3. Cost-of-goods-sold - Cloud infrastructure (per environment + buffer) - Payment processing fees - Third-party data / API licenses - Direct delivery headcount (if applicable) ## 4. Operating expenses by function | Function | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | FY total | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Sales | | | | | | | Marketing | | | | | | | Engineering | | | | | | | Product | | | | | | | Customer success | | | | | | | G&A | | | | | | Each line decomposes into headcount, T&E, software/tools, contractor spend, and other. Headcount must reconcile to the hiring plan. ## 5. Hiring plan Role, function, start month, fully-loaded comp, source budget. Include backfills. Track separately from net-new so the optics of "we hired 30 people" doesn't disguise that 12 were backfills. ## 6. Capex Multi-year purchases (hardware, leasehold improvements, software with >12-month useful life). Note depreciation schedule and impact on the P&L line. ## 7. Scenarios Build at minimum three scenarios: - **Plan** (most-likely) - **Stretch** (revenue +20%, opex flexes up at 50% of revenue lift) - **Conservative** (revenue -20%, defined opex cuts to maintain margin) For Conservative, name the specific line items to cut and the threshold (e.g. "if Q1 revenue < $X, freeze hiring in [function]"). Decisions made under stress are bad; decisions made on paper before stress are durable. ## 8. Approval and review cadence - Initial approval: [CEO / Board] by [date] - Monthly variance review: [first Tuesday of month] - Mid-year re-baseline: [July business review] - Year-end close: [January 31] ## 9. Reference materials - Prior year actuals - Three-year strategic plan - Sales capacity model - Pricing & packaging document

Price: Free
State: approved