Earlier this week we talked about budgeting our time – and now it’s time to talk about budgeting our money. (Ugh). This is probably my least favorite thing about kidmin (yes even worse than no-show volunteers in my book) BUT it’s an important administrative task we can’t ignore.

There is no such thing as a budget fairy to keep track of it all for me (but how awesome would that be?!), so Excel was the next best option. I created yearly and monthly spreadsheets with designated expense categories to help me stay on top of my ministry budget, and this week I’m sharing that tracker with you! 

How it Works:

  • Take a look at the Yearly Example and January Example spreadsheets first to get an idea of how the budget tracker works. The Yearly Example shows you how you’ll keep track of the entire year’s expenses, and the January Example is almost like an expense report to help you keep track of spending month-to-month.
  • Decide on your expense categories (descriptions of mine below). I shared the expense categories included in my budget, but you can edit, change, or add to them to customize your own. (Just don’t delete any of the rows because that will mess with the formatting and then your drop-down menus may not work.)
  • Set your overall, yearly budget first, then break it down by month and category.
    1. Decide on yearly totals for each category, and enter those in the “Year Total for Each Category” Column.
    2. Divide out each category by month, depending on the season (anything that doesn’t need to be divided out by month, put the total in January). For example, my VBS budget is focused on March-June since those are the busiest months for VBS. Can I spend VBS money in other months? Yes. But I know I’ll spend the majority of my VBS money during those months. (Just make sure your spread-out budget adds up to the total you set for the year!)

  • Keep track of expenses each month, and use the drop-down menus available in the Expense Category column for each month to assign each expense to a category. You probably have to do something like this for expense reports anyway, so you can copy the values and details.
  • At the end of each month, total the amount spent in each category, and enter it into your yearly spreadsheet to give you an overview of how your month fits into the whole year. You will have to do a little bit of math here (or at least ask excel to do some math for you), but it’s worth it to stay on top of your ministry spending! The values in orange on the yearly spreadsheet should calculate automatically after you enter numbers in the main body of the spreadsheet, and you do not need to fill them in yourself.

Want to see more from Admin April 2018? Check out the other administrative tips and resources here.

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