okaymom2 - if your PTO is a plus member, you can view a sample budget on the bonus tools page. Also, if you have a copy of the Treasurer Toolkit manual (PTOToday's), there's a sample budget there, too.

Oh, this is a subject near and dear to my heart.

A budget is an approximation of what you expect to bring in revenue and how much you think you will need to spend for each activity, based on past years histories. There is a dynamic ebb and flow of monies and the budget should be 'tweeked' each month, based on performance for fundraisers and the needs of various committees. The only monies that are static are those that are 'appropriated' or earmarked from the previous year.

I hear from so many friends, 'I just don't understand money' or 'It's too complicated'. That is nonsense. Think about how much time and effort you put into making that money!!! You need to know where it goes and approve of how it should be spent.

I have budgets that I have put together for our schools 501(c)3 application and have also done it for former presidents who did not trust their treasurer.
You are all welcome to correspond with me and I will send you what I have.
ademom325@yahoo.com

PLEASE NOTE: Don't post any 'me-too's' to this thread as I won't respond to them. If you want to discuss further, by all means, e-mail me directly.

Does anyone have a sample budget I can view? Our PTO has no budget either or I take that back never seen one.. I'm needing something to show them for an example, they are against anything complicated.. botonyjade@hotmail.com thxs!

What we do in our school, is we don't spend any money until the fall fundraiser comes in. The four officers then sit down in late October and make a list of all of our comittees and how much money we have to spend. We do include in our earnings a forecast for our spring fundraiser! (we look at years past).

We split the money up among the committees with a small amount placed in miscellaneous funds.

We then list the committees with their proposed budget.

At our November meeting, we hand out the budget to the PTO body and we vote to accept it or not. If it is accepted, then the committe chairpeople receive notification of their budget and are free to plan their events.

If the spring fundraiser falls short, we have back-up smaller fundraisers to make up the difference.

I hope this helps!

First you need to make sure that your bylaws are worded in such a way that no funds can be spent over a certain amount without approval. It should also be noted that on the checking account it sould be a requirement of two signatures.

Second, the easiest way to do a budget is to look at the check ledger. Some expenses a PTO has every year without fail. By looking over the finacial reports you can gauge how much each annual expense will be, it is best to try an include every expense right up front so you don't have to go back and vote on things.

You have to get an average on what your fundraisers typically make and also keep in mind any special projects you are trying to fund. Obviously if the fundraisers don't do well the budget will need to be adjusted. If you have any specific questions let me know~

Library, if your PTO is a plus member, you can download a sample budget from the bonus tools part of this site (see top).

We have about 10 income categories and about 30 expense categories in our budget. We start with the checkbook balance at the beginning of the year, add in our projected net income for each category, and offset that with projected expenses for all of our expense categories. We budget to carry over $2k (per our bylaws). Each month we post actual transactions against our categories so we can see how we are doing against our budget.

I've said this before on this site and I probably sound like a commercial...but you can get a whole bunch of really useful training, including info on budgeting, in the Treasurer's Toolkit that you can order here.