A budget implementation plan helps you streamline and optimize the process of allocating and managing project resources. While some organizations prefer to use more advanced financial software tools like Quickbooks or Cube, you can also use a simple spreadsheet to plan your budget utilization in a way that ensures accuracy in your spending and allows you to compare your actual costs versus projected or assigned ones.
Remember, it’s one thing to create a Project Budget during the planning phase. It’s quite another to translate your financial vision into action while at the same time monitoring performance outcomes and adjusting your budget to tackle any new, unforeseen circumstances you run into along the way.
In our template, we create an itemized list of budget-utilizing activities divided by phase. Each task is then assigned to a relevant member of the project team or the ‘Task Owner’. We then ask you to prioritize and update these tasks using our built-in drop-down menus. To help you compare your project spending with your original financial plan, we also distinguish between Assigned and Actual Budget.
Now, let’s explore our template in more detail:
Project Overview
In this section, you provide general details about your project to help the reader contextualize the information included in the rest of the spreadsheet. After identifying project name (and version in case of periodically reviewed projects) and the project manager, you will add the Assigned Budget – or the total amount of financial resources that have been formally approved (by stakeholders) to be utilized during the project’s entire lifecycle from kickoff to closure.
Now, define the scope of your project by identifying key outputs or outcomes, the resources you will need, and the timeline you will be following. Once you have highlighted your project scope, it’s time to list down the key deliverables or your project, which, put simply, are the final results of all your project activities.
The Main Sheet
In the first column, you create an itemized list of action items that you shall divide by phase. For each phase, you will list down individual tasks before assigning them to a member of your team (Task Owner) who shall be responsible for ensuring it is completed as and when originally planned.
If you are looking for a special template that allows you to track your spending on different types of material and human resources, you can use our Resource Plan template for more effective resource planning and management!
Start and end date
Deadlines are the guiding stars of project management. In these two columns, you specify the date when you expect a Task Owner to start working on a task and the date when task results or outcomes are due. This will make sure each team member can adjust their work pace to meet deadlines and get a sense of what different team members or units are working on at any given point.
Feel free to use our detailed Project Timeline template to create viable and effective timelines for your project!
In the last column, you can add any additional comments or remarks regarding a specific action item – for example, you can summarize the rationale of any budget-utilizing activity here or its expected impact on the overall project.
Built-in priority and status assigner
In addition to keeping tabs on who is responsible for completing each task, you can use our color-coded system to prioritize tasks based on factors such as project needs or client demands. Our drop-down menu lets you choose from three options: ‘High’, ‘Medium’, and ‘Low’. We have also added a configuration sheet in case you want to use different categories to suit your own project context.
If you want to learn more about how to prioritize individual tasks within a project, feel free to check out our Prioritization Matrix template!
We have also used a similar color-coded system to help you monitor the status of your tasks (once your project gets moving) using one of seven options:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- Complete
- Need Review
- Approved
- Overdue
- On Hold
If you want to customize this list, you can use our configuration sheet to add, replace, or remove categories to suit your own project needs and context.
Assigned vs. total budget
As you can see, at the top of our main sheet, you will add the total approved amount assigned to the budget as a whole. However, in practice, projects often end up either under-utilizing the budget or running into a budget overrun.
For this reason, we also add the actual budget. This is the amount calculated as a sum of each budgeted expense or item in the main sheet. Any difference between the assigned and actual budget will serve as useful information for project managers, stakeholders, and external auditors who want to effectively track project resources and prevent their misuse.
To Sum Up
Successful implementation of a budget is important for the operational efficiency and overall credibility of any organization. Sadly, this process can be fraught with delays, risks, or challenges that hinder effective financial management. A free and customizable template can help you out here. Whether you are running a nationwide marketing campaign or running a small local business – the art and skill of effective budgeting and resource management is the cornerstone of good project management.
Our editable Budget Implementation Plan template can be instantly accessed as an Excel file in .xlsx, .xltx, and .ods formats, as well as via Google Sheets.
