The annual budgeting cycle can be daunting for even the most sophisticated of finance teams, but Cube can lighten the load. By centralizing your data and providing instant access to view and update budgets via spreadsheets, Cube helps you shift your focus from tedious data management to making the strategic decisions that matter. Here’s how to get the most out of Cube during your budgeting cycle.
Step 1: Choose your budget approach
Companies often build their budget from different starting points based on their current financial landscape and goals. Two common approaches are pre-seeded budgeting and zero-based budgeting.
Pre-seeded budgeting
This method uses existing data as your foundation, saving time and leveraging historical performance. Cube offers many methods, including: Smart Forecast (using AI to generate starting points), Rolling forecast (utilizing your existing forecast data), Current forecast/actuals (pushing forward your existing data), or Trailing 12-month actuals (based on recent performance). Each method offers different advantages depending on your timeline and data quality.
Zero-based budgeting
Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) starts from scratch, requiring justification for every expense. This approach works best for teams seeking tighter cost-cutting measures or realigning strategy and undergoing large organizational changes. To implement this in Cube, create a new scenario named "Zero-based budget [YEAR]" and begin building from zero. Always keep a reference copy of your original budget by duplicating and write-protecting it for future comparison.
Explore our detailed article to learn which budgeting approach best suits your organization's unique circumstances and how to implement it effectively within Cube.
Step 2: Template creation
Template creation forms the backbone of your budgeting process. Setting your templates up thoughtfully from the beginning saves countless hours of rework and prevents confusion when your team is already in the middle of using them. The key to effective template design is anticipating needs before they arise. Follow the steps below to ensure success for your team’s budgeting process.
Adopt a centralized or distributed budgeting process
A centralized template is a single template for all budget owners or contributors. This can be useful for teams who need consistency and simplicity, but it may lack the customization and flexibility that certain departments need.
Distributed templates, on the other hand, are set up per team or department, allowing for more customization but requiring more oversight to ensure consistency across the board.
Deciding which method is best for your organization may require conversations with multiple department heads and thoughtful consideration of your company’s culture, complexity, and modelling needs. The right approach will strike a balance between the standardization and flexibility needed to capture accurate budget inputs across all business units.
Choose a pre-built template or customize your own
If your team is looking for a quick setup, download relevant planning templates from our library and connect them to Cube.
Alternatively, you can create your own template from scratch and connect that to Cube in the same way. Below are the important items to consider when outlining the right template for your team:
What time period are you planning for?
Most organizations will set up their budget templates for the upcoming year, but your organization may potentially opt for a strategic or long-term budget that projects 3 to 5 years out.
How much history should be included?
Cube lets you display as much historical data as needed in your templates, but for ease of use and clarity, it may be best to limit it to actuals from the previous and current years. Our trailing months custom spreadsheet shortcuts make this easy!
Do some areas of your income statement need more detail?
Creating itemized templates lets you break down specific budget areas like Travel, Software, or Marketing into individual line items with notes included as attributes if you like.
For example, instead of having a single line for “Travel Expenses,” you can break it down further into flights, hotels, meals, and transportation. This level of detail helps you capture every cost and makes it easier to identify where adjustments might be needed later on.
What to include in your template:
Directions
Will this template be used across multiple stakeholders or departments? Include directions on the first tab as a guide so everyone knows exactly how to use the template you’ve created. Include steps, deadlines, and any other relevant information here.
Progress tracking
Provide transparency and accountability across your teams by including where each department is in the budgeting workflow using status indicators right in your spreadsheet. Here's a guide for getting started.
Cube dimension-powered dropdown lists
Set up named ranges or data validation dropdowns to make it easy for everyone using your template to switch between different Cube dimension members, such as months, scenarios, or departments. We encourage you to consider building a template that uses your Cube dimension members as spreadsheet drivers, so dimension member names will always match, no matter which selection is made. Connect your row and column headers to your dropdowns using formulas and create a dynamic template for your team.
Set up to publish at the lowest level of dimension members
When publishing to Cube from your templates, all dimensions—such as Account, Department, Entity, and others—must be set to their lowest-level member. For example, rather than publishing to “All Departments,” you’ll need to publish to “Engineering.” This level of detail helps prevent mistakes, ensures accurate rollups, and provides a more granular look at your numbers later. Learn more about publishing best practices so your templates are ready to use.
You can manage this using the Spreadsheet App by making selections in the filters when you publish, or you can set your team up for success and define exactly where each value should be stored by listing them in the rows and columns of your spreadsheet. You can hide these rows and columns if you wish and make them dynamic by setting them to refer to your dimension dropdowns.
Customization by contributor
Sometimes, you can provide enough customization by pointing row and column headers at your dropdown lists, but if the Sales department needs different categories than HR or IT, you may need to tailor sections of your template instead. Providing clear, structured templates increases clarity and efficiency while reducing confusion for stakeholders providing budget details.
Include multiple scenarios
Scenarios are a true powerhouse in Cube, and you can use as many as you need in a single template to incorporate actuals, forecasts, and budgets to create a comprehensive view of past performance and future projections. We recommend nesting your time periods and scenario dimension members in your column headers so you can easily switch and see any set you need.
Define ranges
Ranges tell Cube which areas of your spreadsheet should be used to push and pull data. You can add multiple ranges throughout your spreadsheet with names and fetch or publish permissions to help your stakeholders use your template most effectively and make data transformation easier when moving data between scenarios.
Summary views or variance analysis
Track the progress of your plans using multiple scenarios and breakdowns by department, account, entity, etc, to provide additional insight right in your template. Use multiple scenarios and apply formulas to evaluate whether data ties out and conditional formatting to highlight variances and outliers.
🔥Tip: Harness that spreadsheet power
Templates can be created and used in Google Sheets or Excel, so you can use all the tools built into spreadsheets. Apply conditional formatting, insert charts and graphs, and use formulas for validation to take your templates to the next level. Check out our guides.
Part 3: Distribution of templates
After completing your templates, hold a brief training session to demonstrate how to enter data and publish to Cube. Even with written instructions, live training ensures everyone understands the process and gives team members a chance to ask questions. Department heads can reference our general directions as a starting point.
Distribute templates
Choose the best way to distribute templates to your team based on how they prefer to work. Here are a few options:
- Cube Library: Your Cube library is a repository for any files you need to store or share with your team. These may be spreadsheets you use as templates, or they may be decks, videos, or other files you don’t want to dig through your email or shared drive to find. When you use the Cube Library to store templates and share them with the rest of your organization, your team can log into Cube and download the latest version of the report from their Library page.
- Email: The classic method—send the templates to your team via email. However, they don’t need to email them back. When they’ve completed their part, they just press publish in the Spreadsheet App, and the data is saved to Cube.
- Shared Drive: Save the templates on a shared drive, like Google Drive, SharePoint, or Box. Team members can access the templates there and use the Cube Spreadsheet App to submit their data.
- Calendar Invites: Some customers prefer to attach templates or links to a calendar invite, acting as both a reminder and an easy way for team members to access the files they need.
Gather feedback
After this budgeting cycle is complete, gather feedback from the people in your organization who used your templates and determine what improvements could be made for the next cycle.
🔥Tip: Start small and build your template with each cycle
If this is your first budget cycle using Cube, consider starting with a simpler template to introduce the process to your team. With each future budget cycle, build in additional features to level your template up as your organization’s confidence in the process grows.
Part 4: Manage Scenarios
It's important to routinely manage your scenarios to stay organized throughout the budgeting process. This will ensure that everything stays accurate and up to date for you and your team, and everyone has the data they need for budgeting.
- Save weekly copies: Save a copy of your scenario every week. This will give you a clear record of how your budget has evolved and allow you to track any changes or updates.
- Lock scenarios: Once you’ve finalized a version of the budget, lock it down by applying write protection. This will prevent accidental edits and ensure you have an official version saved for reference.
- Use consistent naming conventions: Establish a naming convention for each budget scenario to stay organized. For example, use names like “Budget_2025_v1” for the first version and “Forecast_2024_v2” for updates. This helps you quickly identify and manage different versions of your budget.
Here are some more ways to effectively use scenarios with Cube.
🔥Tip: Tidy up!
Disable or move old versions of budgets that are no longer needed from your Scenario dimension page to keep them out of your way.
Conclusion
With this guide, you now have the essentials of building and managing a streamlined budgeting process using Cube. With customizable templates, flexible forecasting options, and the ability to centralize your data, Cube empowers your team to create accurate, efficient budgets while maintaining control and collaboration across departments. Now, it’s time to put these practices into action and maximize the value Cube brings to your organization.
Curious about other FP&A processes with Cube? Check out our guides and templates.