Using the Matrix

On the first tab you will find a simple table with services on the left and the annual cost on the right. Quite simply this is all a budget really is. A list of services with the cost you anticipate will be spent on each service during the budget period. Yes we can add more bells and whistles on to the budget to provide more information to you and your customers, however you should never lose sight of the budget in its most simple form – it just makes it easier to manage.

Feel free to delete the holding text for each service and replace it with an actual service likely to be required at a development you manage. Once you have done this, enter in some annual costs. Don’t worry about the accuracy or realism of the costs, we are just looking at budget structure for now. We’ll get into how to determine reasonable costs in the next lesson.

Take note that, as you enter in costs, the Total at the bottom of the table will increase or decrease. Here we are using a basic SUM formula. There will be a handy list of useful formulas and how you use them later in this lesson.