Private Practice Budget Template
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One of the essential components of running a private practice is making sure you understand the financial aspects, such as forecasting income and budgeting for expenses.
If you’re new to running a practice, figuring out how to create a budget spreadsheet may feel overwhelming.
This guide provides budget spreadsheet examples for therapists, a step-by-step guide on setting up a budget spreadsheet, and a free downloadable private practice budget template—containing all the formulas and budget lines you’ll need. Use this resource to ensure the business side of your practice runs smoothly.
Why it’s important to set up a budget spreadsheet
As a clinician, you’ve learned how to diagnose and treat a wide range of conditions, but you may not have learned the business skills required to run a private practice.
Operational knowledge, such as managing a budget, is critical to run a successful practice.
Here are some of the key reasons why it’s important to set up a budget spreadsheet:
- Helps you meet financial goals: A budget spreadsheet will help you not only keep an eye on the financial health of your practice, but it will also provide data you can use to create financial goals and mark your progress toward those goals.
- Helps you track spending: A budget spreadsheet will list projected income and expenses with actual data, giving you information about how much money you really earn and spend.
- Assists in decision-making: Having a grasp of the financial aspect of your private practice will enable you to make more informed decisions about marketing, hiring, and any other expenses to budget for.
How to create a budget spreadsheet
Creating a private practice budget template is more straightforward than you might think. We’ve outlined the key steps you’ll need to follow below:
1. Research
While you may already know your total income and average expenses, you may find some extra information in your bank statements, like one-off or annual expenses you’d forgotten about. These are critical to account for so you’re not blindsided by unexpected expenses—you can financially equip yourself with a reserve or emergency fund to pay for these items in the future. It’s best to download the last three to six months of statements to get a sense of your overall spending—including those forgotten one-off payments made a couple months ago.
2. Record income and expenses
Make note of your income and expenses from your bank statements. Income should include private practice sessions, case consulting, any paid supervision you offer, or other services you charge for.
3. Populate spreadsheet
Using our free downloadable private practice budget template, enter your income and expenses, then let the formulas do the math.
4. Create financial goals
Spending time budgeting also gives you the opportunity to think about your broader financial goals. Think about where you see yourself and your practice in the next three, five, and ten years. Perhaps you’ll bring on other professionals with a specific area of expertise, expand your clinical expertise, become a supervisor, or take on more clients. Budgeting provides a way to plan for sustainable growth by setting savings goals, investing in your practice, or hiring help.
5. Get accurate
Budgets aren’t just theoretical forecasts—they’re meant to be practical and interactive tools that evolve as you build your practice. Budgeting allows you to compare your actual income and expenses to the forecasted figures and informed estimations you initially made, so you can adjust your goals accordingly.
Budget spreadsheet examples for therapists
Now that you’re familiar with setting up a budget spreadsheet, you can download and save our free private practice budget template.
The template includes budget spreadsheet examples for therapists, with tabs for your income, expenses, and monthly maintenance fees.
Income
In this section, include your income for private sessions per week, supervision income, consulting, guest lecturing, workshops, and any other income generating service you provide.
Expenses
- Your private practice management software, including your electronic health record (EHR) system, or technological tools you use for HIPAA secure communication, messaging, and documentation
- The amount you put into savings so you can account for future expenses
- Operational expenses, such as a private practice telephone line, registered agent (if you are a virtual practice), rent, licensing fees, professional directory listing fees, and liability insurance
- Marketing expenses, such as social media interns, website maintenance, or subscriptions to graphic design templates
- Educational expenses, such as continuing education courses
- One-off expenses, such as business incorporation fees, attorney fees for creating paperwork, accounting fees for year-end taxes, or licensing fees
- Annual expenses, such as your annual business license renewal, insurance, licensure renewal, and memberships to professional organizations
Monthly maintenance fees
If you lease a property, you may have to pay for landscaping, painting, window cleaning, etc.
You don’t need to be an expert in spreadsheets and formulas to use this simple expense spreadsheet template. The formulas are built into the template, so all you need to do is enter your income and expenses and our private practice budget template will do the rest.
In the income section, you only need to enter the number of sessions per week and your rate, and the template calculates the monthly and annual totals for you.
The last tab is the monthly maintenance section, which summarizes your total income and expenses. It even deducts your tax liability, providing you with your take home (net) pay each month.
How SimplePractice streamlines running your practice
SimplePractice is HIPAA-compliant practice management software with everything you need to run your practice built into the platform—from booking and scheduling to insurance and client billing.
If you’ve been considering switching to an EHR system, SimplePractice empowers you to streamline appointment bookings, reminders, and rescheduling and simplify the billing and coding process—so you get more time for the things that matter most to you.
Try SimplePractice free for 30 days. No credit card required.