Tool

Expense Category Planner

Free expense category planner for Australian businesses. Select your industry, set monthly budgets per category, and see your annual spend breakdown.

Plan your business expense categories

Knowing where your money goes is the first step to controlling it. This free tool helps you map out your expense categories and set monthly budgets, so you can see your annual spend at a glance.

How to use it

Select your industry from the dropdown to pre-fill categories with typical amounts
Adjust the monthly budgets to match your business
Review the breakdown to see which categories take the largest share

Why category planning matters

Most Australian SMEs track expenses after the fact. By the time the monthly statement arrives, the money is already gone. Planning your categories upfront gives you a framework for setting budgets, configuring spend controls, and measuring actual vs planned spending.

Common expense categories by industry

The tool pre-fills categories based on your industry. Construction businesses typically spend on materials, equipment hire, fuel, and PPE. Education providers spend on teaching resources, IT, and excursions. NFPs spend on program delivery, fundraising, and grant-specific costs. Each industry has a different spend profile.

Plan your expense categories

Select your industry to pre-fill categories, then adjust monthly budgets. The tool calculates annual totals.

Industry

$0 monthly total

$0 annual total

Frequently asked questions

How do I use this planner?

Select your industry from the dropdown to pre-fill common expense categories with typical monthly amounts. Adjust the values to match your business. The tool calculates your monthly and annual totals and shows a percentage breakdown by category.

Are the pre-filled amounts accurate?

The default values are indicative starting points based on common spend patterns for each industry. Every business is different. Adjust the amounts to reflect your actual or planned spending.

Can I add custom categories?

This tool uses pre-set categories per industry. For a fully customisable expense tracking solution with real-time data, Budgetly lets you create unlimited custom categories, budgets, and cost centres.

Methodology and disclaimer

Categories and default amounts are based on common expense patterns observed across Australian SMEs in each industry. This tool provides estimates for planning purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Actual spending will vary based on business size, location, and operations.

Stop planning expenses in spreadsheets

Budgetly tracks every transaction in real time, codes it to the right category with Bookkeeper AI, and syncs to Xero automatically. No spreadsheets, no manual data entry.

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