It comes around every year at the same time, and no matter what you do, it never seems to be any less challenging of a process. We’re not talking about getting the kids back to school or preparing for the holidays. We’re talking about the 2026 budgeting season. 

Sure, budgeting season is a great time to reframe priorities, reallocate funds to drive growth and promote resilience, and get an overall pulse check on your org’s performance. But that doesn’t make it any less complex. You’ve got inputs from every department across the company on top of year-end close, on top of year-end audits, and it’s all just a recipe for some serious overwhelm. 

We won’t tell you not to worry, but we will tell you there are steps you can take to deliver an accurate and achievable 2026 budget that’s also ready for the future. Let’s dive in. 

Reimagining the Budgeting Process

Budgeting in 2025 for 2026 will undoubtedly contain more volatility in the form of inflationary pressures, interest rate uncertainty, tariff fluctuation, and shifting market conditions. Of course, budgeting and forecasting for a year are never a one-and-done: They’re re-evaluated and adjusted several times throughout the year, usually on a quarterly basis and more frequently as additional external factors demand. 

So if you want to be more forward-thinking in your 2026 budgeting process, you can’t just improve the process; you have to reimagine it. Consider rolling forecasts, driver-based models, and scenario planning. AI planning tools can also help by uncovering anomalies, fast-tracking insights, and finding recommendations that a traditional spreadsheet might not surface on its own. 

Five Keys to Building An Effective Budgeting Plan

1. Well-defined, realistic objectives. This starts with understanding your business’ strategic goals and priorities, then relating them to the budget. Your org may use a framework like objectives and key results (OKRs) to define goals and then track progress against them. Finance can then take those objectives—statements that describe what should be achieved and/or improved—and use them to align the budget with each department’s goals. The clearer the objectives, the better the budget can allocate funding, and the better the accountability for the budget process and its results. 
2. Wide and deep collaborative approach. Believe it or not, budgeting does not only involve the finance team. A really good budgeting process involves collaboration with other teams like operations, marketing, sales, and more so that the budget accurately reflects each department’s priorities. That communication, though, must be a two-way street: Decisions and priorities for the budget should be communicated back out to stakeholders so that each department understands the “why” behind the funding decisions made and can see the appropriate data and analysis to back up those decisions.
3. Robust data and analysis. Supporting that informed decision-making so your budget is grounded in reality requires a solid data foundation. Be sure to include historical data, market trends, and any other relevant information that will help your team build the most realistic forecasts. 
4. Scenario planning. Very rarely do things go exactly as planned. Scenario planning can help decision makers account for risks and uncertainties that could impact the budget by identifying ranges of potential impacts and outcomes, evaluating responses, and managing positive and negative possibilities. While scenario planning can feel like a big time commitment, especially if this is the first time you’ve done it, overall it will help improve your budget’s resiliency—and that of your whole organization. This can also significantly boost confidence in your budget because it’s been stress-tested and has come out on top. 
5. Regular reviews and adjustments. Nothing will stay the same in the business across the span of a year, so your budget shouldn’t stay static either. Take regular looks at the budget to check that it’s based on the latest data, assumptions, and business environment. This is also a good opportunity to check in on the set goals to see if they’re still achievable. As the business changes priorities or performance, these reviews between the budget and actual performance also provide a chance to reallocate resources as necessary. 

Using Tech to Improve the Process

You don’t want to merely survive the budgeting process; you want to thrive in it and create a 2026 budget that helps the organization thrive as well. So don’t let your team get bogged down with manual tasks when technology can take the load off and streamline your process. 

Real-Time Data Integration
The system you’re building your budget in must integrate as much as possible with all the other software that provides data to help inform the budget. Think your ERP, for one. Real-time integration keeps everyone on the same page as the budget is created, reviewed, and adjusted, reinforcing collaboration.

Driver-Based Budgeting
What are the key drivers of your business’ performance? Whether it’s sales volume, price, cost of goods sold, or something else, your budget should quantify and measure the impact of those drivers on the financials. 

Add in AI
AI can make it easier to analyze large amounts of data, whether current or historical, to look for patterns, trends, or anomalies that might predict future outcomes. Armed with this information, your team will be able to build a more accurate budget and forecast. 

Embrace Automation
Whether you’re looking at tools to automate the budget approval process, send alerts when budget limits are closing in, or populate budget templates, automation will certainly speed up the budgeting process while promoting consistency and cutting down on errors. 

Use Real-Time Reporting and Analysis
Having to-the-moment information is key for budget success. With real-time reporting, your analytics and dashboards will always have the latest data to help monitor budget versus actuals and pick out where improvements can be made. 

Support Your Next Budgeting Cycle with ExtendInsights

Budgeting season takes time and attentiveness—along with technology—to build the right framework for the upcoming fiscal year. And whether you’re just in initial planning stages or you’re already staring down the barrel of your 2026 budget planning, there are plenty of resources out there to help you create a robust and effective budget to support goals and navigate potential challenges. 

By the way, this doesn’t mean leaving behind your “old faithful” favorite financial tool: Microsoft Excel. You can actually use a connected spreadsheet with the help of data integration that empowers you with to-the-moment data in your spreadsheets for a crystal clear snapshot of where the business is and where it needs to go next. 

Integration solutions such as ExtendInsights are purpose-built to help you keep working where you and your teams are most comfortable and familiar—Excel—while making it simple and efficient to pull data from NetSuite saved searches, HubSpot reports, Chargebee subscription data, and more into a dynamic spreadsheet. With direct integrations enabled between Excel and your top data sources via ExtendInsights, you can be sure you’re always reporting with and making decisions on the most accurate and up-to-date information available. Not to mention that tracking in a spreadsheet makes this information available across the organization, not just to those who have direct access to your data sources. Which means that siloed forecasting can quickly become a thing of the past, and you can move forward with more accurate budgets and forecasting. 

See how ExtendInsights can improve your budgeting and forecasting. Try it FREE today.