A school is one of the most important social institutions in our communities. It provides a learning environment that helps impact skills, information, and experience to students for the betterment of the world. However, to maintain a positive learning environment, you need adequate employees, proper maintenance, proper building structures, and learning equipment, among others. All these things require funding.
Therefore, to ensure everything runs well, you must prepare a sincere school budget template. This budget template will cater for all the income generated within the institution as well as total expenses that may arise during the running of the school.
What is a School Budget Template?
It is a document that helps in keeping a track record of school funds. In other words, it’s an estimation of planned events expressed in monetary values. Besides, the template acts as a guide to properly manage and finance various projects and plans of the school. Usually, it analyses the school’s income vis-a-vie the expenses. With such information, the school administration can always make a rational decision to facilitate the smooth running of the school activities.
Free Templates
Importance
- A budget template help provide a correct estimate of schools revenue and expenditure
- The template also helps regulate the school’s spending as per the budget.
- A school budget template helps an institution to meet its objectives
- Also, it confers school management to collect and spend funds effectively and appropriately.
- The template ensures that those activities that need urgent attention receive appropriate and prompt funding.
Step-by-Step Guide on Making a School Budget Template
A simple budget template for school can be created using Microsoft Excel or other software. Due to its significance, every school should always strive to have a budget template. However, some school heads might find it challenging to draft these templates.
Therefore, if you are wondering where to start, here is a guideline that will make you write a comprehensive school budget in minutes:
- to identify the school’s total revenue: First, you need to identify all sources of income within the school. These may include educational grants, state income, school-generated income, parents’ contributions, to mention a few. Once you’ve recorded the total revenue, you can proceed to the other step.
- Identify total expenditure: Here, you need to collect all the information concerning the schools’ expenses. Also, remember to separate the essential costs of discretionary costs. The payments may include salaries/wages, cost of repairs/maintenance, administration costs, etcetera.
- Analyze the spending habits: Once you’ve identified all the revenues and expenses, you can compare and analyze your spending habits. You can use a graph to provide an accessible overview of your financial plans. One importance of this analysis is that you will always know whether or not to cut down your spending.
Sample of a School Budget
The following is a sample of a simple template for school budget:
| School Budget Template School Name Budgeted Year School rank/code | |||
| Income | Budget | Actual | Variance |
| School fee | $150,000 | $100,000 | $50,000 |
| Tuition fee | $200,000 | $150,000 | $50,000 |
| Grants | $100,000 | $100,000 | |
| Total income | $450,000 | $350,000 | $100,000 |
| Expenses | Budget | Actual | Variance |
| Salaries | $100,000 | $200,000 | -$100,000 |
| Marketing | $150,000 | $100,000 | $50,000 |
| Security | $100,000 | $100,000 | |
| Repair | $100,000 | $100,000 | |
| Other expenditure | $50,000 | $100,000 | -$50,000 |
| Total expenses | $500,000 | $600,000 | -$100,000 |
Tips for Preparing a School Budget Template
Below are a few tips that you can follow to create an effective template for a school budget:
Focus on school improvements
When making a school budget, you must think about the various improvements necessary for your school. Every school seeks to improve its operations and the quality of education. Therefore, while making the budget, ensure that you stay in line with the school’s improvement plan. This contributes to the overall success of your school.
Think of the sources of income the school receives
It is another essential factor to consider when making a budget template. Remember that most schools operate more or less similar to a non-profit organization. Therefore, their sources of income are usually limited, especially in public schools. Therefore, when making the budget template, ensure you consider all the sources of income to avoid over budgeting.
Identify the cost of school resources in the market
To offer a high quality of products and services at school, one should always go for useful resources. Therefore, before creating the budget template, take some time, and check the prices of high-quality resources in the market. Ensure that the funds are up to standards but less costly.
Frequently Asked Questions
A school budget template is a document that helps in keeping a track record of school funds; it provides a financial plan of a school for a given period. What’s more, it determines how money is raised and how it will be spent on the school.
The essential components of a template for a school budget include a school profile summary, total income, total expenditure, and a graphical overview of the budget. However, you can always add other components to meet your needs.
When creating a budget template, you should consider all the administration should always analyze various school activities that need to be funded. Also, they are responsible for collecting adequate resources to meet the expenses.
This budget template helps in efficient and appropriate management of school finances. It helps track and monitor schools’ progress as well as better utilization of funds.
Conclusion
Generally, template for school budget is used to assist in the organization of a school’s budget. These budget expenses include salaries, utilities, tuition fees, books, library expenses, to mention a few. For many, making a school budget can be difficult. However, this is always simplified using budget templates. The templates provide an easy tabulation of data hence easy tracking of the schools’ income and expenditure. Therefore, before you prepare your school’s budget, always consider having a template to simplify things for you.
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