Excel Templates

KaChGo11

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Hi everyone,

Does anyone have a good link to any site(s) which offers quality excel templates for budgeting and cost projections?

Thanks!
 
Yes, i've looked at the Microsoft templates and they weren't really that great. Even a pay-for service would be fine if there were some more complex templates.
 
The problem I find with this stuff is that everyone wants something that is fairly customized to their own business. (Not a knock, it's just what we're all after.) I'm curious what industry you're working in...
 
Long-term health care industry. I've just started getting fed up with multi-spreadsheets and pulling all data together but perhaps the only solution might be to look at budgeting software to avoid this. I was just hoping to first see if any existing templates might have helped out.
 
That's correct. So many potential errors can occur when linking several together whether it's tabs within a workbook or separate workbooks.
 
For sure, I get that.

We used to ahve a budget package that was linked together. I think there were about 20 different files and some of them linked around in a circle as we traced them through. (It was built by a consultant that a former GM hired.) The thing was a spaghetti code nightmare, full of issues.

4 years ago I re-wrote the entire thing to turn it into a database/template model. I've got one central database that holds 4 different types of budgets in it. Each department has a separate template and we upload the data to the database via VBA, pullling it into our consolidated statements via PivotTables. So basically the deal is that I open up the template, refresh the history (to generate forecasted actuals), build my next year's budget, and upload it.

It still has some issues (coming from the guy who wrote it and still isn't finished improving it), but it works awesome. The benefits and drawbacks though, are that it is very much targeted at our systems, our key metrics and our way of doing business. (No template ever fit my business. We looked at budgeting software, but I could never seem to find any that fit my needs either.)

Reason I mention this is that I know your frustration. Excel may/may not be your route going forward, but I wouldn't necessarily rule it out because you can't find something stock. At the end of the day, it may be in your best interests to build your own package... after all, you already have, just in the form of linked spreadsheets.
 
Fair enough. I do try to improve the linking system each year and it's much better than the original i was handed years ago! Anways, i appreciate your insight.
 
Just as a further point of interest... this is a copy of my linkage chart. I update this every year as I improve the package so that I can keep straight what goes where. (Even with the database, certain departments have to be done first as they are allocated out to others.)

If you have all your links noted (syle them in a specific colour), and you have something like this to keep clear what is happening, I can't see why it couldn't be a viable system. :)
 

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