FINANCE TEMPLATE

Budget Proposal Template

Budget request with breakdown, ROI analysis, alternatives, and staged approval.

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What's inside

Field	Details
Budget For	Department, project, or initiative
Period	YYYY-MM-DD — YYYY-MM-DD
Total Requested	$XX,XXX
Requested By	Name
Status	Draft
Decision Deadline	YYYY-MM-DD

What & Why

Question	Answer
What is this budget for?	One sentence: what you're funding
Why do we need it?	The problem this solves or the opportunity it captures
What happens if we don't fund it?	Cost of inaction
When do we need the money?	Timing and urgency

Budget Breakdown

Category	Item	Amount	Recurring?	Notes
People	New hire / contractor / backfill	$XX,XXX	Monthly / One-time	Role, level, start date
People
Software	Tool or license	$X,XXX	Annual	Per-seat or flat
Infrastructure	Cloud / hardware	$X,XXX	Monthly
Services	Consulting / agency	$X,XXX	One-time	Scope and deliverable
Other
Total		$XX,XXX

What We Get

What does this budget buy? Be specific about the outcomes — not activities, outcomes. Finance cares about ROI, not effort.

Outcome	Metric	Without This Budget	With This Budget
Primary outcome this spend delivers	How we measure it	What happens if we don't spend	What we expect if we do
Secondary outcome

Alternatives

What else did you consider? Show that you've thought about cheaper or different ways to achieve the same outcome.

Option	Cost	Trade-off
Do nothing	$0	What we lose by not investing
Smaller investment	$X,XXX	What we'd get and what we'd miss
This proposal	$XX,XXX	Why this is the right level

Risks

Risk	Impact	Mitigation
What could go wrong with this spend	Financial impact	How we limit the downside

Timeline

Milestone	Date	Spend Trigger
Budget approved	YYYY-MM-DD	$0 — no spend until approval
First spend	YYYY-MM-DD	$X,XXX — what we commit first
Checkpoint	YYYY-MM-DD	Review results before committing rest
Full spend	YYYY-MM-DD	Remaining budget released

Approval

Role	Name	Decision	Date
Budget owner		Proposed	YYYY-MM-DD
Finance		Pending	YYYY-MM-DD
Executive sponsor		Pending	YYYY-MM-DD

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