Click for Takeaways: Why Excel Templates Lead Finance
- Generation Excel: Contrary to myths, 54% of Gen Z finance pros “love” Excel, and 90% of the top U.S. firms (valued at $12.5T) prioritize candidates with advanced spreadsheet skills.
- Primary Automation Tool: 58% of finance leaders still name Excel as their #1 automation tool for 2025, supporting a global user base of 3.9 million dedicated finance professionals.
- FP&A Career Lock: Over 75% of all open FP&A job listings explicitly require advanced Excel mastery, making it the most essential tool in the analyst’s toolkit.
- Foundation of Finance: 26% of finance departments rely exclusively on spreadsheets for all operations, proving that Excel is the bedrock of modern financial planning.
- AI-Augmented Future: Rather than replacing spreadsheets, new AI features like Copilot are extending Excel’s life by automating formula suggestions and complex data formatting.
There are many ways to create a budget, but one of the easiest, most efficient, and most effective ways to keep track of income, expenses, and financial objectives is with Excel budget templates.
While budgeting is necessary, it isn’t a task many would gladly take on. Fortunately, if you use an Excel budget template, it doesn’t have to be such a headache.g templates for businesses and see for yourself!
Nine out of 10 top U.S. companies by market cap, collectively worth about $12.5 trillion in value, still seek out financial analysis candidates who have advanced Excel skills. Remarkably, 54% of Gen Z finance employees say they “love” Excel, with 78% of younger respondents reporting high or moderate attachment to the tool, challenging assumptions about generational differences in financial tools.
Top 10 Free Excel Budget Templates
For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of 10 of the best free Excel budget templates for businesses.
Whether you’re a small startup or a flourishing enterprise, these templates can make budgeting easy and maybe even fun!
Check out these ten free Excel budgeting templates for businesses and see for yourself.
1. Balance Sheet Template
A balance sheet (or statement of financial position) is a financial report that summarizes an organization’s assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity for a particular period of time.
This means the balance sheet creates a picture of what the organization owes and owns for a particular time frame.
Use our balance sheet template to evaluate your organization’s status and financial stance.
2. Profit and Loss Statement Template
One of the most critical aspects of operating a business is calculating profit and loss, though it’s a fairly complex task.
The good news is we’ve created a free profit and loss template that makes calculating actual and projected revenues more convenient.
3. Cash Flow Statement Template
The cash flow statement (CFS), or cash flow report, is a financial statement that summarizes the amount of cash entering and leaving an organization.
Alongside the balance sheet and income statement, the cash flow statement is a mandatory component of an organization’s financial reports. It aims to look at how cash is moving in and out of the business.
By examining this, organizations can consider how funds are moving throughout the organization and observe what impact cash flow has on the business.
Use this free cash flow statement template to examine your financials.
4. Financial Ratios Template
Financial ratios are the best indicator of a healthy business model. They provide insights and important information on a company’s performance, profitability, and financial health.
This Excel template is a complete 5-in-1 template – it has all of the formulas needed for calculating all of the five most important financial ratios:
- Liquidity Ratios: Measure working capital performance or the money available to meet your current, short-term obligations.
- Leverage Ratios: Measure how much debt your company has.
- Efficiency Ratios: Show how effectively your company uses working capital to generate sales.
- Profitability Ratios: Measures how your company generates profits using available resources over a given period.
- Market Value Ratios: Measures how valuable your company is. Plug in your company’s numbers and get a quick and accurate picture of where you stand on liquidity, debt concentration, growth, profitability, and market value.
Excel remains the dominant tool in finance due to its comprehensive capabilities, with 3.9 million Excel users dedicated to finance-related tasks in 2021, making it the largest professional user group. The software offers a multitude of functions and templates to streamline accounting processes , from creating balance sheets to budgeting and financial forecasting. In fact, 58% of finance leaders still rely on spreadsheets as their primary automation tool, according to Rossum’s Document Automation Trends 2025 report, even as AI and advanced technologies emerge. Excel functions like NPV, IRR, PMT, and XNPV are essential for financial modeling and forecasting, with professionals using advanced features including pivot tables, VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH for data analysis.
Example of the five financial ratios template with the inputs tab and Liquidity ratio as an output. Download the template to use all five financial ratios
5. Small Business Budget Template
Since its publication in 2015, this free business budget template has been a favorite of many startups and average-scale organizations. Many first-time users commend it for its versatility and ease of use.
With just one workbook, you can create a monthly and annual budget for your company and then compare the numbers to your projections. The template also has an overview sheet that provides convenient access to your budgeting performance.
6. Business Budget Template
The Business Budget spreadsheet is a must-have for businesses in the retail and service industries.
When you download the template, you’ll find two worksheets – one for services and the other for goods.
The Services worksheet is divided into categories closely resembling an income statement. The cells are easy to modify and customize, making tracking your income and business expenses less troublesome.
The Goods worksheet, on the other hand, is specially designed for retailers and manufacturers.
It contains all the categories in the Services worksheets, plus a Cost of Goods Sold section where you can input your inventory, create a breakdown of purchases, and calculate your gross profit.
7. 12-Month Business Budget Template
A variant of the Business Budget template above, this worksheet by Vertex 42 includes a 12-month sales and business expenses section. It comes in handy when budgeting for expenses that occur annually, quarterly, or at specific intervals throughout the year.
The template also has a separate Goods worksheet to create a comprehensive breakdown for multiple product sales.
8. Detailed Financial Projections Spreadsheet
This worksheet is designed for businesses that require a more comprehensive business plan for their complex operations.
The template has almost everything you’ll need to track and record critical financial decisions – from sales and receivables to payroll costs and expense projections.
As its name suggests, this worksheet is very detailed. You can also use it to compute and compare your annual totals.
9. Professional Business Budget Template
Another budget worksheet for medium to large-scale businesses, the Professional Business Budget template, offers a separate sheet for recording business-related expenditures and another for plotting accrued expenses.
This template also features a variances tracker and charts for analyzing your company’s budget and expenses data.
Excel proficiency remains critical for career advancement in finance, with advanced Excel skills required for over three-quarters of U.S. FP&A roles according to Datarails’ analysis of 500 open FP&A job listings. 41% of finance professionals name Excel as their top business tool, placing it ahead of ERPs, FP&A solutions, PowerPoint, and collaboration tools, with accountants showing the strongest preference at 57%.
10. Project Budget Template
Budgeting for a project isn’t easy, but it’s a pain when dealing with unexpected changes. The Project Budget template monitors the various aspects of a project.
Labor, materials, costing, completion stage—you name it, this template will help you easily track and align expenses.
Despite predictions of Excel’s decline, the tool continues to evolve and maintain dominance in finance operations. 54% of businesses across the globe were leveraging Excel in 2019, with the software serving an estimated 1.5 billion users worldwide.
The emergence of “Generation Excel” demonstrates sustained relevance, as 94% of older workers report high or moderate attachment to Excel, while younger professionals are entering the workforce with deep comfort using the platform. 26% of finance departments report using no automation tools whatsoever beyond spreadsheets, highlighting Excel’s role as the foundation of financial operations.
Modern developments include AI-powered features like Copilot in Excel, which suggests formulas and formatting options, and integration capabilities with cloud-based platforms. 66% of finance leaders don’t fear losing their teams to advanced automation, understanding that technology should augment rather than replace human capabilities.
Excel Budgeting FAQs
An Excel budget template is a pre-built spreadsheet designed to help businesses plan, track, and manage income, expenses, and forecasts. It provides a structured format that reduces setup time and improves consistency in budgeting.
Common Excel budget templates include operating budgets, cash flow budgets, departmental budgets, and annual financial budget templates. Businesses choose templates based on complexity and planning needs.
Excel budget templates can support basic forecasting by using historical data and assumptions. However, forecasting accuracy may decline as data volume and business complexity increase.
Excel budget templates often rely on manual updates, version control, and data consolidation, which can lead to errors and inefficiencies as teams grow.
Businesses typically move beyond Excel templates when budgeting becomes more complex, requires collaboration, or needs automation and real-time data integration.
