IT Budget Planning Tips

Fri, Oct 25, 2024

This article serves as a question starter for building budgets for an efficient and effective IT department. It’s not all-encompassing, but includes many of the things that I’ve learned to look out for and be aware of over the years. I hope that it serves the reader well in helping you get out of the reaction mode that usually comes with preparing a budget for your Finance Team, and instead be more creative and solve problems

Questions

• What major projects do you plan for next year? Account for each of them in your budget.
• Are there any consulting engagements you anticipate? Add them.
• Do you have any account name change recommendations to make to create more clarity and consistency in the future? What accounts bug you all the time? What large buckets do you wish you had broken out into more detailed accounts?
• Have you accounted for your IT Lifecycle replacements? Workstations, Servers, SANs, Network equipment, Firewalls, etc.
• What are the team’s travel plans for next year? Do you plan to have any team offsites for team-building? Do you need to check in at other branch offices? Are there any relationships that you want to build at those offices? Have you planned for flights, car rentals, food/per-diem, team meals?
• Will you have any compliance audit/remediation costs (SOC, PCI, SOX, HIPAA, etc.)?
• Do you plan to add any new staff members? Have you done market research to determine the cost of doing so?
• Are you planning to give your staff merit increases?
• Have you built training plans for your team and covered all of the related costs?