Creating an IT Budget [closed]

Firstly is this a CapX budget (hardware/software/sometimes maintainence) or an all encompassing(everything you could possibly need including salaries, travel, training, etc) budget?

Since generally IT budgets are CapX i'll stick to that below.

You can't do this in a vacuum, you need to talk to the business side (CxO, managers, etc) and find what projects they have in mind for the coming year, also what at the pain points for them as far as the computer systems go. After you do that, you need to sit down and look at the infrastructure to see what needs to be updated and/or maintained. Also make sure you catalog what maintenance renewals need to be renewed.

The next step would be to make a list of must have equipment and software as well as a list of nice to have equipment and software.

Now that you have those lists throw them into a spreadsheet some header fields to get you started are: Product - Quantity - Unit Price - Extended Price. Add what you need to make the spreadsheet work for you.

Now go out and get quotes on EVERYTHING - yes everything - and toss the pricing into the spreadsheet. Don't include any discounts the sales people say they can get you and ask for either a separate line item for the discount or two quotes, one discounted and one list price. Also, be honest when they ask you your purchasing time frame just say "I'm just pulling together next years budget right now, so the best I can tell you is sometime in the coming year."

The sum of all of these is your Budget. Make sure you have your list of "Nice to haves" ready for when you bring it to the boss, it's the stuff that you just don't fight for when the knives get put to the budget.

There are at least two areas you need to think about Capital expenditure (e.g. buying things like hardware, and possibly including software in this) and a consumables/operating budget for things that you expect to use in normal daily work (e.g. printer toner, possibly include mice & keyboards in this, etc). Decide what needs to go into each budget (do you want to rent or buy hardware, for example).

Think about how much it costs for consumables per month and use that to give a figure for that budget, but be aware that some months will see higher use of certain items than others (for example, printing/toner costs might go way up at certain intervals if you have big print runs at certain times of the year).

Think about lifetimes/replacement schedules for both hardware and software - if you want to establish a 4 year life-cycle for workstations then once you establish this routine you might be able to work out a regular replacement schedule and cost each year instead of 'shocking' the business by buying large amounts of equipment "every now and again".

One of the most important things is, as Zypher says, that you can't do this in a vacuum. You need to talk to senior people to establish what their needs, expectations and projects are, and you need to obviously know what realistic amounts are to look for in your budget (no point in asking for money that simply isn't there) and you need to feed back what you can deliver for that amount - most internal conflict in business over things like this happens when people don't understand one another's expectations.