Budget Worksheet

Most association budgets were not built. They were set years ago and carried forward by every board since, and the numbers in them describe a building that no longer exists. Insurance went up and nobody adjusted; a vendor raised their rate and the difference quietly came out of the reserve.

This worksheet rebuilds the budget from the only two honest sources: what you actually spent, and what your reserve study says you need to save. The video covers the rule; the sheet is where you apply it to your own numbers.

One rule, two sources

Operating gets its numbers from actuals. Pull twelve months of bank statements, categorise every expense, and put the real total in the “last year’s actual” column. The forecast beside it is rounded up from that — never down to a number that feels right — with a minimum 3% increase on every recurring line, because every recurring line goes up. The variance column shows you where last year’s budget was lying.

Reserves cannot be forecast from actuals, because the expense has not happened yet. The reserve line comes from the study: what it costs to replace the roof today, inflated forward to the year you write the cheque. The sheet puts what the study asks for beside what you actually contributed and computes the shortfall, because every dollar that skips the reserve comes back later, bigger, all at once.

The four pitfalls

The video names four ways boards break the rule without noticing, and the worksheet has them as yes/no checks at the bottom: rounding to a number that feels right, forgetting inflation, skipping the contingency, and treating the reserve contribution as optional. They stack — each understatement hands its shortfall to the next, and the reserve is where the sum arrives. Check all four before you present.

The calendar

A budget also has a deadline, and it is earlier than most treasurers think. The board adopts it at a properly noticed meeting; owners get a copy some number of days before the vote; in some states owners can reject a budget that raises assessments past a threshold. Work backward from the fiscal year start and the draft has to be ready well over a month out — not the week before. The calendar section on the sheet does that arithmetic once you fill in the notice window your bylaws and state require.

What to send with it

A one-page summary of what changed and why. The spreadsheet is the evidence; the summary is the story owners actually read, and it is what turns “why are assessments going up” into a conversation about what the building needs.