Budget Planning Deck

About this template

When to use this

A 16-slide deck for taking next year’s budget through a management or department-head meeting: cover, agenda, five body sections (a divider slide plus a content slide each), a comparison slide, a key-metrics slide, a trend slide and a closing slide. If the meeting only needs the total figure approved, this is too long — pull out slides 14 and 15 and use those two alone.

Agenda and slides map one to one

The agenda on slide 2 has eight lines: basis of the estimate, total size, allocation by account, reasons for increases and decreases, spending schedule, this year’s spend versus next year’s request, key metrics, trend. The first five each own a divider-plus-body pair (slides 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12); the sixth is the comparison slide 13, the seventh is the metrics slide 14 and the eighth is the trend slide 15. Nothing listed in the agenda is missing a slide. If you drop or reorder an item, edit the agenda line and its slide together so the numbering stays right.

What goes on each slide

The five pairs already carry titles, so split the budget story into those five blocks.

1. Slides 3-4, basis of the estimate: inflation, last year’s execution rate, the share of departmental requests you honoured
2. Slides 5-6, total size: next year’s total, the change versus this year, the contingency share
3. Slides 7-8, allocation by account: payroll share, operating costs split from expenses, allocation per department
4. Slides 9-10, reasons for change: justification for the lines you raised and where the cut money used to go
5. Slides 11-12, spending schedule: the quarterly plan, the first-half target, the carry-over deadline

Each content slide is a title, a one-line lead and three statements. Put conclusions in those three lines, not background. Keep detailed tables on a handout; pasted tables shrink the type badly in this layout.

Examples

• e.g. slides 7-8: Sales 1.24B (+8.2%) / Engineering 2.17B (+15.1%) / Admin 0.63B (-3.0%)
• e.g. slides 9-10: the 15.1% increase for Engineering is entirely 310M of payroll for eight new hires
• Slide 14 ships with total 21.4B / +9.2% YoY / payroll 46% / reserve 3%. Replace with your own, e.g. total 4.82B / +9.4% YoY / payroll 41% / reserve 5%

Fixing the two number slides

On slide 14 each large figure is paired with a label underneath — change both, not just the figure. The bars on slide 15 are sized against the four quarterly values 44, 58, 52 and 60, so after you enter your own numbers you must rescale the bars against the new maximum. Swapping the quarters for four years works with the same layout, and showing next year inside a four-year trend usually argues better.

Common mistakes

• Leaving the left column of slide 13 untouched (19.6B spent, 91% execution, payroll 48%, reserve fully used). Only when this year’s actuals are yours does the right column — 21.4B requested, payroll 46%, a separate 3% reserve — carry any weight.
• Editing slides 13 and 14 separately. The 21.4B total and the 46% payroll share appear on both, so changing one leaves two different numbers on screen during the talk.
• Omitting units on the metric cards. The first question you get will be whether 4.82 means billions or millions.
• Cutting sections but keeping all eight agenda lines, which makes the dropped items look forgotten.