Business Budget Calculator
Free small business budget calculator: allocate monthly revenue across payroll, marketing, software, and facilities - see surplus or deficit instantly.
Average monthly revenue (or next month’s expected revenue).
Salaries, wages, benefits, and payroll taxes.
Rent, utilities, insurance, and office costs.
Everything else - travel, professional fees, contingency.
Results
Payroll budget
$45,000
45% of revenue
- Marketing budget12% of revenue
- $12,000
- Software budget8% of revenue
- $8,000
- Facilities budget6% of revenue
- $6,000
- Other budget9% of revenue
- $9,000
- Total allocated80% of revenue
- $80,000
- Surplus
- $20,000
You are allocating 80% of $100,000 in monthly revenue, leaving a $20,000 surplus each month for savings, debt paydown, or reinvestment.
Free and instant - nothing is stored or sent. Estimates for planning purposes, not accounting, tax, or investment advice.
A budget is not a spreadsheet ritual - it is the fastest way to see whether your spending plan actually fits inside your revenue. This calculator turns percentage allocations into dollar budget lines and immediately shows whether the plan produces a monthly surplus or a deficit.
Start with your current spending as percentages of revenue, then stress-test changes: what happens to the surplus if payroll moves from 45% to 50%, or if you cut marketing by three points? Because everything recalculates instantly, you can test a quarter of scenarios in a minute.
What a percentage-of-revenue budget measures
Percentage-of-revenue budgeting expresses every major cost category as a share of what the business earns, then converts those shares to dollars. It answers the question every operator should be able to answer instantly: for each dollar we bring in, where does it go?
The method scales naturally: if revenue grows 20%, each budget line grows with it unless you deliberately hold a category flat. That makes it a good first-pass planning tool for SMBs that do not yet run full driver-based budgets.
The formula, in plain language
Each budget line is simply revenue multiplied by its allocation percentage: a 45% payroll allocation on $100,000 of monthly revenue is a $45,000 payroll budget. The surplus (or deficit) is revenue minus the sum of all lines - the money left over after the plan is funded.
If your allocations add to more than 100%, the calculator shows a deficit: you are planning to spend more than you earn, which only works temporarily and only with cash reserves or financing to cover the gap.
How to interpret the result
A consistent surplus of 10–20% of revenue is commonly targeted by healthy SMBs - it funds taxes, debt service, reserves, and owner distributions. A structural deficit means the plan needs surgery, usually starting with the largest line.
Payroll is typically the biggest lever: service businesses commonly run payroll between 30% and 50% of revenue, though the right number varies enormously by industry and stage. Compare your allocations against peers in your industry rather than a universal benchmark.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of revenue should a small business spend on payroll?
It varies widely by industry. Labor-intensive service businesses commonly run 30–50% of revenue, while product or software businesses often run lower. The more useful test is trend: if payroll percentage rises quarter over quarter without revenue-per-employee improving, the cost structure is drifting.
Should I budget from revenue or from costs?
Start from revenue. Percentage-of-revenue budgeting forces every category to fit inside what the business actually earns. Cost-up budgeting (adding up what each team wants) routinely produces plans that exceed revenue and then require painful cuts later.
How often should I rebuild the budget?
Set the annual plan once, then re-forecast monthly or quarterly. The percentages rarely need to change more than once a quarter, but the revenue number they multiply against should always reflect your latest forecast, not January’s guess.
What should the "other" category include?
Travel, professional fees (legal, accounting), bank charges, and a contingency buffer. A common practice is to hold 3–5% of revenue as explicit contingency so surprises reduce the buffer instead of breaking the budget.
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