Time is money. This is not just a proverb, but a quantifiable measure. How much time is given to each function is not just a measure of how important it is, but also determines the total costs and economy of the function. Thus a budget manager must not just account for money allocated to each project, but also the time and personnel he is giving it.

A critical parameter is Full Time Equivalent (FTE). If you decide to make an employee work on a project for all his time, then you have allocated one FTE of your available resources to that project, and you can convert that into monetary terms.

The Resource Allocation Template can help you make a record of all your resources in terms of FTE. You can then use that to assign priorities to projects, as well as assign staff and budget to them.

The devil is in the details, it is said, but it is also necessary to focus on the bigger picture. One, because it will give you a long-term perspective on your department’s activities, and two, because your higher-ups may only want to see the big numbers and not look at the details. There are three sheets that count.

The first is the capital outlay – the expenses you want to incur in building assets. Then there are the recurring expenses – what you need to spend to keep the project going. And finally the benefits – how are each of your projects going to benefit the organization. These are the sort of sheets that will help you swing the big bosses to give you what allocation you want!

The Project Summary Template will help you prepare each of these sheets, with the help of a filled-in example.