Renovation budget spreadsheet: track committed vs paid

A renovation budget that records only what you have paid hides the money you have already promised. Here are the columns and formulas that separate Budget, Committed and Paid, with a $16,000 cabinet line worked through.

General information only, not financial, construction or legal advice. Contingency, holdback and payment-split percentages are your own inputs, and payment and deposit rules vary by contract and by state or province; check yours. Figures cited from other sources are dated where they appear.

Why Committed matters more than Paid

A renovation budget needs three money columns on every line: Budget (what you planned), Committed (the quote you accepted plus approved change orders) and Paid (cash that has left your account). Committed minus Paid is the unpaid commitment, money you still owe on work you have agreed to. Budget minus Committed is what you can still decide about. A sheet that tracks only payments cannot show either number.

One line: kitchen cabinets

You budgeted $16,000 for cabinets, accepted a $14,500 quote and paid a $5,000 deposit.

A sheet that only counted payments would show $11,000 left (16,000 minus 5,000). But $9,500 of that is already owed to the cabinet maker. The number that matters is the $1,500 in Remaining.

Four lines, rebuilt in a sheet

This small kitchen has four scope lines. Put headings in row 1 and the lines in rows 2 to 5. Columns A to J match the table below; the Line ID in column A is what lets payments and change orders find their line. Budget (C) and Base quote (D) are typed; everything from E onward is a formula.

Judged by payments alone, 29,200 minus 9,800 leaves $19,400 and the budget looks comfortable. Judged by commitments, only $7,450 is uncommitted, and $6,000 of that is the countertop line, which has no quote yet. The three committed lines net to $1,450 of room (1,500 minus 250 plus 200).

The formulas

Assumed layout: the Change Orders tab has CO# in A, date in B, Line ID in C, contractor in D, description in E, amount in F and status in G. The Payments tab has date in A, Line ID in B and amount in C. Adjust the letters to your own sheet.

E2  Approved COs  =SUMIFS('Change Orders'!$F$2:$F$200,'Change Orders'!$C$2:$C$200,A2,'Change Orders'!$G$2:$G$200,"Approved")
F2  Committed     =D2+E2
G2  Paid          =SUMIFS(Payments!$C$2:$C$200,Payments!$B$2:$B$200,A2)
H2  Unpaid        =F2-G2
I2  Remaining     =C2-F2
J2  Flag          =IF(G2>F2,"Overpaid",IF(F2>C2,"Over budget",IF(F2=0,"Not committed","OK")))
K2  Forecast      =IF(F2>0,F2,C2)
L2  Variance      =C2-K2

Fill rows 2 to 5 down and total each column in row 6. Forecast uses the committed figure where there is one and falls back to the budget where there is not, so K6 is 27,750 and the variance in L6 is $1,450. Of the 27,750, $9,800 has been paid and $17,950 still has to leave your account: $11,950 owed on commitments plus the $6,000 budgeted for countertops. The flag tests Overpaid first (paid more than the commitment), then Over budget, then a line with nothing committed, which reads Not committed instead of looking fine.

What changes when the countertop quote arrives

Type $5,400 into D3 and nothing else. Committed becomes 5,400, Remaining on that line drops from $6,000 to $600 and the flag changes from Not committed to OK. Across the project, Committed rises to $27,150 and Remaining falls to $2,050 (29,200 minus 27,150). The same logic catches a payment that runs ahead: if payments logged against plumbing totalled $3,000 instead of $2,800, which is its commitment, the flag would read Overpaid, a $200 difference to chase.

Checks

• Payments tie out. =SUM(Payments!$C$2:$C$200)-SUM(G2:G5) should be 0. Anything else means a payment was typed with a Line ID that matches no budget row, so the money is spent but sits on no line.
• Committed is the whole quote. A $5,000 deposit goes in Payments, not in Base quote. The commitment is $14,500 from the day you accept it.
• Keep Budget and Base quote apart. Typing the quote over the budget erases the baseline that Variance needs.
• Use a dropdown for status. SUMIFS ignores letter case but not a trailing space, so "Approved " is not "Approved".

Where to go next

A change order raises Committed, so log each one separately rather than editing the quote; see the change order tracker guide. To see how much slack you have left for surprises, read how much contingency is left. For the same columns summed per room, see renovation budget by room and, for a worked kitchen, kitchen remodel budget spreadsheet. The Hexloom Renovation Budget Tracker has these columns already wired.

What this does not do

This is a planning tool, not financial, construction or legal advice. It does not tell you what a job should cost, whether a quote is fair or when a payment is due; those come from your contract. Every budget amount here is the example's own input, so set yours.

More renovation budget guides

• Renovation cost overrun percentage calculator: the formula and a worked example
• Renovation contingency tracker: how much contingency is left
• Renovation change order tracker: a spreadsheet for homeowners
• Renovation budget by room spreadsheet: SUMIFS per room, with an overrun flag
• Kitchen remodel budget spreadsheet in Excel, built line by line
• DIY renovation expense tracker spreadsheet: receipts by room and category
• Contractor payment schedule template for homeowners in Excel
• Contractor bid comparison spreadsheet for homeowners
• Bathroom remodel budget spreadsheet in Excel: how much is really left