Free template
IT budget template (Excel): opex/capex, quarterly phasing, 3-year view
A free Excel workbook for building a client (or company) IT budget: per-category line items for licenses, hardware refresh, security, projects and managed services, each tagged opex or capex, phased across four quarters, with computed totals and a three-year view. Built for MSPs preparing budgets for clients, and just as usable by an internal IT manager.
The download is ungated — no form, no email, no "work address" field. Click, open, budget.
What's inside
Sheet 1 — Budget
The main worksheet. One line per budget item, categorized (licenses & SaaS, hardware refresh, security, projects, managed services, cloud & connectivity), each tagged opex or capex, with Q1–Q4 columns. FY totals and opex/capex subtotals compute automatically, and a three-year block at the bottom holds your FY+1 and FY+2 estimates.
Sheet 2 — Hardware refresh
One row per device due for replacement: device, type, age, the quarter you plan to replace it, and estimated cost. This is the line item most budgets get wrong when done by hand — the sheet totals it and feeds the refresh lines on the Budget sheet.
Sheet 3 — Assumptions
Refresh-cycle defaults you can edit (workstations, servers, network gear), plain definitions of opex vs capex, and a short how-to for the quarterly phasing — so whoever inherits the spreadsheet understands the numbers.
How to use it
1. Tag every line opex or capex
Opex is the recurring spend that hits every year — licenses, agreements, security subscriptions, connectivity. Capex is the lumpy one-time spend — hardware, projects. Separating them is what makes the budget defensible in a finance conversation: recurring costs get compared year over year, capital costs get planned and depreciated.
2. Phase by quarter, not by twelve
Don't divide annual costs evenly. Put each line in the quarter the invoice actually lands — renewals cluster, refreshes cluster. A budget phased by real timing is the difference between a plan and a guess.
3. Build the hardware refresh sheet from your asset list
List every device past (or approaching) its refresh cycle, with age and a target quarter. Do this before filling the Budget sheet — the refresh total is usually the biggest surprise in a small-business IT budget, and the one clients most resent discovering mid-year.
4. Sketch years two and three loosely
The three-year view exists for direction, not precision. FY+1 and FY+2 are estimates you revise annually — their job is to show the client that this year's refresh spike is a cycle, not a trend.
The line this template can't fill in for you
Everything on the Budget sheet is knowable from invoices — except hardware refresh. That line requires an accurate asset list with ages and warranty dates, and keeping it current in a spreadsheet is exactly the kind of quarterly chore that quietly stops happening.
That's the part QBR Studio automates: connect your PSA and the refresh budget computes itself from synced asset data — device ages, warranty status, estimated replacement cost — and lands in every client's quarterly business review and no-login client page automatically. The template is the manual version; the product is the version that stays current without you.
Budgeting for the review meeting itself? Grab the QBR template too, and if you're building out strategy services, start with what a vCIO actually does.
FAQ
Is the download really ungated?
Yes. The link above is a direct file download — no form, no email address, no follow-up sequence. If the template is useful, you'll remember where it came from; that's the whole exchange.
Does it work in Google Sheets?
Yes — upload the .xlsx to Google Drive and open it in Sheets. The totals and subtotals use plain SUM and SUMIF formulas, which Sheets handles identically.
Why aren't there pre-filled dollar amounts?
Because they'd be made up, and made-up numbers in a budget template do more harm than blank cells. The structure — categories, opex/capex split, quarterly phasing, refresh cycles — is the part worth templating. The amounts are your data.
What's the difference between this and a technology roadmap?
A budget is the money view; a roadmap is the initiative view. This template deliberately stays on the money side — quarterly spend, refresh planning, three-year direction. Pair it with your roadmap document rather than trying to make one file do both jobs.
Or connect your PSA and skip the spreadsheet.