2027 Budget Template Your Reports Can Read

A budget template your reports can read is one table, not a workbook of tabs. Each row is a budget line carrying six things: the reporting line it rolls into, the person who owns it, the basis it was worked out on, how it's phased across the twelve months, the nominal codes in your ledger it maps to, and the department or site it belongs to. Build it in that shape and it loads into Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage 50, Sage 200 or Business Central (or sits in one spreadsheet a report can read), and your budget vs actual report updates itself every month. Build it as a formatted summary sheet and someone retypes it every month of 2027.

This is the step before the report, which I've written up in how to build a budget vs actual report.

Download the template: the 2027 budget template is a free Excel file, no sign-up. It has the table below with the nine example lines filled in, phasing profiles that spread each annual amount across the twelve months, and a load table that rebuilds itself as one row per line per month, all with formulas. Set the first month of your financial year and the month headings follow.

What should a 2027 budget template include?

The rows below are examples for a small trading business with a services side. Yours will have different lines, but every line needs all six columns.

Template: my working layout. Employer NI rate and threshold from HMRC's rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027 (15% above the secondary threshold of £5,000 a year), as of October 2026. Nominal code ranges are illustrative; use your own chart of accounts.

Two columns do most of the work. Owner makes the budget somebody's: when marketing is over in May, the report knows whose line it is. Maps to is what lets software read it; without it, a person marries budget words to ledger codes by hand every month.

Why build it as one table rather than a summary sheet?

Because the budget vs actual report compares at a particular grain: reporting line by month by department. If the budget is held at that grain, the report is a join. If it's held at a different grain (quarterly totals, a tab per manager, merged cells), somebody reshapes it every month, and that's the job that never goes away.

The sheet people fill in can be wide, months across the top, because that's how department heads think. The table that gets loaded is long: one row per line, per dimension, per month, with an amount. Finance turns one into the other when the budget is signed off and again at each reforecast.

Keep the line list short as well. Four hundred lines at nominal code level is precise and unreadable. Thirty to sixty reporting lines, each mapping to a range of codes, is about right for a business of 20 to 200 people, in my view.

How do you work out the basis for each line?

Two ways, and both are fine in the right place.

A driver. Headcount × salary, units × price, contracts × monthly fee. Worth the effort for the big lines, because when the line goes wrong you can see which part went wrong: fewer units, a lower price, or a hire that started late.

Last year plus a percentage. Perfectly sensible for small, stable lines like insurance and bank charges.

A rule I use: the ten biggest lines get a driver, the rest get last year plus a stated percentage, and the basis column says which is which.

Payroll needs its own note, because it's usually the biggest cost and it has dates attached. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over rose to £12.71 an hour from 1 April 2026 (GOV.UK, published 1 April 2026). Last year's rise was announced on 26 November 2025, the same day as that year's Autumn Budget; this year's Autumn Budget is on 28 October 2026 (HM Treasury, as of October 2026). Check GOV.UK for the April 2027 rates before you lock the payroll lines. If your year runs January to December, January to March use the 2026 to 2027 rates and April onwards the new ones, so the salary line steps up in April.

The Employment Allowance for 2026 to 2027 is £10,500 for eligible employers (same HMRC page). Calculate the NI line from the salary line rather than guessing it separately, so a change in headcount moves both.

How should you phase the budget across the months?

Phasing is the column people skip, and it's why so many monthly variances turn out to be "just timing". Four ways to phase a line:

• Evenly. Rent, most subscriptions, salaries for people already in post. Twelve equal months.
• Seasonally. Sales lines, using last year's monthly shape. If December was a small month last year, it's a small month in the budget.
• By date. Annual renewals, campaigns, events, bonuses, a new hire's start month. The amount goes in the month it happens.
• Following another line. Materials follow sales; employer NI and pension follow salaries.

An illustrative example, with round numbers that aren't from any real business: last year, December carried 5% of the year's sales and March carried 11%. A £1,200,000 sales budget phased evenly puts £100,000 in both months. Phased on last year's shape, it puts £60,000 in December and £132,000 in March. Same annual number, very different board meeting in January: the even version reports a £40,000 December shortfall that was never a shortfall.

How do you load the budget into Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or Business Central?

Each system has an import, and each has a quirk. All checked against the vendor's own help pages in October 2026.

Xero. Budgets live in Budget Manager, which supports importing and exporting budgets, and the budget variance and budget summary reports compare them with actuals (Xero UK, as of October 2026). Fill in Xero's own import layout rather than your own, so the account names match exactly.

QuickBooks Online. Budgets are on the Plus and Advanced plans. You can import from an Excel file of 10MB or less, as a consolidated budget or subdivided by class or location. Profit and loss and balance sheet budgets can both be created, but only profit and loss budgets can be imported (Intuit UK help, as of October 2026). Turn on class or location tracking before you build the template, because the subdivision is chosen when the import file is generated.

Sage 50 Accounts. Budget values come in through File, Import, with Nominal Accounts as the data type, from CSV or Excel. The import overwrites existing budget values for the codes in the file, and it only works for the standard budgeting method: Sage says you can't import advanced budget information (Sage UK knowledgebase, as of October 2026). Check which you use under Settings, Company Preferences, Budgeting.

Sage 200. Nominal budgets import from CSV, either as one annual figure Sage spreads equally, a separate figure per accounting period, or a profiled budget using percentage templates. The nominal accounts must exist first, and accounts you expect to be in credit (income, mostly) must be entered as negative numbers. You choose whether the import also updates the original budget or only the current one (Sage 200 help, as of October 2026).

Business Central. G/L Budgets allow several budgets for the same period (a budget and its reforecasts side by side) and up to four dimensions. On the Budget page, Export to Excel gives you a workbook to fill in and Import from Excel brings it back, with Add (keep existing entries) or Replace (overwrite them). Only posting accounts take values; anything on a heading line is deleted on import (Microsoft Learn, updated April 2026).

Should the budget live in the accounting system or in a spreadsheet?

In the accounting system, if it can hold every dimension you budget by: then the system's own budget reports work and there's one copy. In one spreadsheet if the budget has a dimension the ledger doesn't (salesperson, say), as long as it's one file in one place on SharePoint or OneDrive, in the long shape above, with a version column ("Budget 2027", "Reforecast Q2"). A reporting tool reads that file as happily as it reads the ledger.

What doesn't work is both. A budget in Xero edited in March and a spreadsheet that wasn't give you two budget vs actual reports that disagree.

How does this turn into a budget vs actual report that updates itself?

With the template in this shape, the hard part is done. The report needs the ledger's actuals, the budget table, a mapping from nominal codes to reporting lines (your Maps to column as a table of its own), a calendar, and a check that the actual total ties to the ledger's profit and loss every refresh. The monthly pack it usually sits in is covered in The Monthly Management Accounts Pack.

If the ledger is your one source and the budget is either in it or in one spreadsheet, that's what the First Report is built for: one system, one report answering one written question ("are we on budget, by line and by department?"), the headline number reconciled to the ledger to the penny, £1,950 fixed, live in your own Power BI workspace within ten working days. Everyone who opens it needs a Power BI Pro licence, which Microsoft's UK page lists at £10.80 per user per month, paid yearly, excluding VAT, as of October 2026. Not sure whether your setup counts as one source? Book a free 20-minute call and we'll work it out.

Common questions

What should a budget template include?

One row per budget line with six columns: the reporting line, the owner, the basis it was calculated on, how it's phased across the months, the nominal codes it maps to, and the department or site. Load it in a long shape (line, dimension, month, amount) so the accounting system or a report can read it without reshaping.

Is there a free budget template I can download?

Yes. The 2027 budget template on this page is a free Excel file with no sign-up. It holds one row per budget line with the six columns above, spreads each annual amount across the months with phasing profiles, and builds the long load table a report or an import reads.

Should we budget by month or by quarter?

By month, even if you review quarterly. Monthly figures follow seasonality, start dates and renewals, and accounting systems report budget against actual by month or period. A quarterly budget divided by three creates timing variances that aren't real.

How do we budget for salaries in 2027?

Build it from a headcount plan: each role, its salary, the months it's in post and the month any rise applies. The National Living Wage is £12.71 an hour for those aged 21 and over from 1 April 2026; check GOV.UK for the April 2027 rate. Employer NI for 2026 to 2027 is 15% on pay above £5,000 a year per employee.

Can you import a budget into Xero or QuickBooks Online?

Yes. Xero's Budget Manager supports importing and exporting budgets. QuickBooks Online, on the Plus and Advanced plans, imports budgets from an Excel file, consolidated or subdivided by class or location, though only profit and loss budgets can be imported, as of October 2026.

How many lines should a small business budget have?

Enough that each line has an owner and a reason to exist. For a business of 20 to 200 people, thirty to sixty reporting lines usually covers it, each mapped to a range of nominal codes.

What's the difference between a budget and a reforecast?

The budget is the plan the board signed off, and it doesn't change. A reforecast is an updated view of the rest of the year, often done quarterly. Keep both in the same table with a version column, so the report can show actual against budget and actual against the latest forecast.