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Business budget calculator

A free business budget calculator built for Singapore businesses. See your budget balance, margin, runway, and payback period instantly, with insights that tell you where to act first.

Start Calculating

Know exactly what your business earns, spends, and keeps each month. This free business budget calculator does more than add up your numbers. Enter your income, expenses, and cash position, and it works out your monthly budget balance, profit margin, and cash runway, then tells you what those numbers mean and where to act first.

Planning a big one-off spend? Add it below, whether it's a business setup, a marketing campaign, a new office, or an event, and the calculator estimates your payback period, the number of months until that investment pays for itself.

No spreadsheet formulas, no downloads, no sign-up. Your figures stay in your browser and are never stored or sent anywhere.

Enter your monthly figures to see your budget balance, margin, runway, and where your money actually goes

Required. Everything else is optional and unlocks extra insights

Cash position

Optional
SGD $0

Your current business account balance. Unlocks your cash runway and buffer coverage

Monthly income

SGD $0

Money coming into the business each month, before expenses

Required. Everything else is optional and unlocks extra insights

Salaries and benefits

SGD $0
Required. Everything else is optional and unlocks extra insights

Monthly expenses

SGD $0

Everything else you pay every month. Enter at least one expense to see your budget balance

One-time costs

Optional
SGD $0

Big one-off spends: a launch, a campaign, a new office, an event. Add as many as you need. Unlocks your payback period

Nothing added yet. Pick a template above to get started

Your budget summary

Total monthly income
SGD $0
Total monthly expenses
SGD $0
Monthly budget balance
SGD $0
Profit margin
-
Cash buffer
-
Payback period
-

This calculator provides estimates for planning purposes only and doesn't constitute financial advice. Benchmarks shown are general guidance and vary by industry. Figures are based on the values you enter and aren't stored or sent anywhere.

How to use the business budget calculator

Only 2 fields are required: your revenue and your salaries. Everything else is optional, and each optional section unlocks an extra insight. Here's the quickest way through it.

  1. 1

    Choose your currency

    SGD is the default, and USD, HKD, AUD, EUR, and GBP are also supported.

  2. 2

    Add your cash on hand

    This is optional but worth 10 seconds, because it unlocks your cash runway if you're operating at a loss and your buffer coverage if you're profitable.

  3. 3

    Enter your monthly income

    Separate revenue from sales, other operating income, interest, and grants, so you can see which streams actually drive the business.

  4. 4

    Fill in your monthly expenses

    Salaries and wages sit here too, alongside rent, marketing, software, insurance, and inventory. Count your own salary as well. If the business only works because you work for free, that's worth knowing now rather than later.

  5. 5

    Add one-time costs if you have any coming up

    Pick a template, from business setup and marketing campaigns to office openings, events, website builds, equipment purchases, product launches, trade shows, and recruitment drives. Add as many as you need, or build your own with the custom option, where you can rename every field.

  6. 6

    Read your summary

    You'll see your budget balance, profit margin, cash position, payback period, a breakdown of where your money goes, and up to 3 insights that tell you what to look at first.

A tip from us: use the calculator both ways. Enter last month's actual figures to understand where your money went, then enter your planned figures to set next month's budget. The difference between the two is usually where the most useful conversations start.

What is a business budget, and why should you care

A business budget is simply a plan for your company's money over a set period, usually a month, a quarter, or a year. It sets out how much you expect to earn, how much you'll spend, and what should be left over. Your P&L tells you what happened. Your budget tells you what you wanted to happen, and the gap between the two is where the useful information lives.

51%

of Singapore SMEs struggle with managing cash flow and accessing funding

QBE Singapore SME Survey 2025

36%

reported the same struggle just one year earlier

QBE Singapore SME Survey 2025

1 in 3

Singapore Business Federation's National Business Survey

Singapore Business Federation's National Business Survey

The pattern behind those numbers is rarely a lack of revenue. It's costs drifting quietly for months while nobody compares actual spending against the plan. A working budget fixes that in 3 ways:

  • Visibility: you know your true monthly cost base instead of guessing
  • Early warning: a negative budget balance shows up months before a cash crisis does, while the fix is still cheap
  • Faster decisions: hiring, pricing, and expansion calls get easier when you know exactly how much slack you have

Built for how startups, SMEs, and mid-sized businesses actually budget

The maths of budgeting is the same at every stage. What changes is which number deserves your attention, and the calculator surfaces all of them.

Startups: watch your runway

If you're pre-revenue or early-revenue, running at a loss is usually the plan, not the problem. The real question is whether your burn matches your milestones. Enter your monthly figures and cash on hand, and the calculator shows how many months you can operate before the account hits zero. Our advice: if your runway is shorter than the time to your next funding milestone plus about 6 months of fundraising time, treat that as this week's problem, not this quarter's. Given that most Singapore SMEs hold less than 6 months of runway, you won't be alone, but you do want to be ahead of it.

SMEs: watch your margin and your buffer

For an established business, the budget balance and profit margin are your operating heartbeat. Two companies with identical revenue can have completely different resilience depending on margin. The calculator benchmarks yours, flags when payroll is taking an outsized share of income, and shows how many months of expenses your cash covers. A buffer of 3 to 6 months of operating expenses is the target most finance advisers suggest. If one late-paying customer or one soft month would push you into difficulty, the insights panel will surface that before your bank statement does.

Mid-sized businesses: watch the category mix

Once you're running multiple teams or markets, the risk is rarely one big cost. It's drift across many categories at once: software subscriptions that outlived the teams that bought them, marketing spend that grew with revenue but never got re-justified. The "where your money goes" breakdown ranks your top cost categories as a share of total spend, which makes drift visible at a glance. It's also a quick scenario tool: raise the salaries figure to model a hiring plan, or trim revenue by 10% to see how your margin holds before you commit to new fixed costs.

What the calculator measures

Monthly budget balance

Income minus all expenses. Positive means your operations fund themselves. Negative means you're drawing down cash, and the runway figure tells you for how long.

Profit margin

Your budget balance as a percentage of income. As rough guidance: under 10% is thin and leaves you exposed to small shocks, 10 to 20% is healthy for most operating businesses, and above 20% gives you real room to reinvest. Margins vary a lot by industry, so treat these as starting points. For a deeper look at just this number, try our margin calculator.

Cash runway or cash buffer

Both come from the same input, your cash on hand. If your balance is negative, you'll see runway: how many months until the money runs out. If your balance is positive, you'll see buffer coverage: how many months of expenses your reserves cover. Below 3 months, prioritise building reserves. Well above 6, your surplus cash is sitting idle, and you can put it to work earning returns with Yield.

Payback period

Your one-time costs divided by your monthly budget balance. Spend SGD $50,000 on a new office fit-out while keeping SGD $2,000 a month, and your payback period is 25 months. Under 2 years is generally strong for a small business. Beyond 3 years, it's worth a rethink: reduce the outlay, lift the margin, or stage the investment.

Where your money goes

Your top 5 cost categories ranked as a share of total spend, salaries included. This is where budget reviews earn their keep. A 5% saving negotiated on your largest category usually beats aggressive cuts across all the small ones, and it takes one conversation instead of ten.

How to create a business budget in 5 steps

The calculator handles the arithmetic. These 5 steps handle the thinking behind it.

  1. 01

    Start with real income figures

    Use your average monthly revenue from the past 3 to 6 months rather than your best month. Pre-revenue? Build a conservative case and budget against that one.

  2. 02

    List fixed costs first

    Rent, salaries, insurance, and software subscriptions don't move with sales, so they set the floor your income has to clear every month.

  3. 03

    Add variable costs

    Inventory, transaction fees, delivery, and performance marketing usually rise with revenue, so estimate them as a percentage of sales if that's how they behave.

  4. 04

    Keep a little aside for surprises

    Unexpected costs always come, so reserve 5 to 10% of monthly expenses for them, and work towards a cash reserve of 3 to 6 months of expenses over time.

  5. 05

    Compare your actuals against the plan each month

    This is honestly the step that matters most. The budget itself is just a starting point; checking how reality compared to it is what tells you something.

Make it a habit, not a one-off

Here's the simple routine we'd suggest, and it takes about 30 minutes a month.

At the end of each month, pull your actual figures from your business account and run them through the calculator. Ask yourself 3 quick questions: did the balance land where you expected, which category moved the most, and did your cash buffer grow or shrink. Jot down the biggest surprise and why it happened. That's it. Done every month, this catches cost drift in weeks instead of quarters. If your spend is already categorised in real time through your cards and account, the whole thing takes minutes, which is exactly what Aspire's expense management and budgets are built for.

Then, once a quarter, spend a little longer and look forward instead of back. Re-run the calculator with your best estimates for the next 3 months, and stress-test it: reduce the revenue field by 10% and see if your balance stays positive. That 10-second test is the cheapest early warning system available to any business.

Before any big commitment, model it here first. A new hire is a permanent rise in your salaries figure. New equipment or an office move is a one-time cost block with a payback period you can see instantly. Raising funds? Run your current burn to see how much runway the raise actually needs to buy you.

Frequently asked questions

A business budget calculator is a tool that adds up your business income and expenses and shows your monthly budget balance, the amount your business keeps after all costs. This one goes further: it also works out your profit margin, cash runway or buffer, and the payback period on one-time costs, then gives you plain-language insights on what to fix first.

Add up all monthly income, then subtract salaries and all other monthly expenses. What's left is your budget balance. Divide it by income for your profit margin, and divide your cash on hand by monthly expenses to see how many months of buffer you hold. The calculator on this page does all of this as you type.

Yes, it's completely free, with no sign-up and no download. All calculations happen in your browser. Your figures are never stored, sent, or shared.

Every income stream, salaries including your own, rent and utilities, marketing, software subscriptions, insurance, inventory and supplies, and a small buffer for surprises. If you have a big one-off spend coming, add it as a one-time cost so you can see the payback period.

The calculator has ready-made templates for the one-off spends Singapore businesses most often face: business setup, marketing campaigns, new office openings, events, website or app builds, equipment or vehicle purchases, product launches, trade shows, and recruitment drives. There's also a custom option where you can name every cost line yourself, and you can stack as many one-time costs as you need.

It varies by industry, but as broad guidance: under 10% is thin, 10 to 20% is healthy for most operating businesses, and above 20% is strong. F&B and retail typically run lower, and services and software typically run higher, so compare within your sector rather than against the average.

Service businesses typically spend 30 to 50% of revenue on payroll, and product or inventory businesses usually run lower. More useful than the ratio itself is its direction: if payroll share is rising while revenue per employee is falling, headcount is growing faster than the business.

The most common target is 3 to 6 months of operating expenses. Newer businesses and those with concentrated customers or seasonal revenue should aim for the higher end. The Singapore Business Federation found that over a third of credit-strained businesses hold less than 3 to 6 months of operating cash, so building this reserve puts you ahead of a large share of the market. Cash well beyond 6 months of expenses can be put to work instead of sitting idle.

Runway is how long your business can operate before running out of money. Divide cash on hand by your monthly shortfall. A business with SGD $60,000 in the bank losing SGD $10,000 a month has 6 months of runway. If your runway is shorter than your next milestone plus fundraising time, treat it as a priority now.

The payback period is how long your business takes to earn back a one-off investment: one-time costs divided by your monthly budget balance. Under 2 years is generally strong for a small business. Beyond 3 years, look at the plan again before you commit.

Monthly, and it only takes about 30 minutes. Enter your actual figures at each month end and compare them against what you planned, then re-set the plan once a quarter. Early-stage companies change too quickly for anything less frequent.