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Travel Budget Template
Travel budget template can be used by people to plan their travel budgets by putting in their budgets and all possible expenses in one sheet and determining the shortfall or surplus, helping them to plan their entire itinerary in advance and cut down or add to their itineraries based on the budget.
About the Travel Budget Template
The given template is an exhaustive template that starts with the travel budget and goes on to incorporate all your budgeted expenses to arrive at a budgeted surplus or shortfall. It also displays a pie chart which provides a pictorial presentation of expenses. It contains the following heads:
#1 – Budget and Expenses:
The head displays total budget and expenses. Total Budget is an input field while total expenses and surplus/shortfall are calculated fields. Refer to the screenshot below for details:
#2 – Expenses Pie Chart:
The pie chart is a pictorial presentation of expenses that is auto-populated based on the inputs in the next section. The expenses are grouped into broad categories and the pie chart is prepared to present those categories only. Refer to the screenshot below for details.
#3 – Expenses Details:
The user can use this section to input expenses details covering all sorts of expenses the user will expect to incur during the travel. The expenses are further broken down the number of units per expense and the cost per unit. The amount column gives the total of each line item. Refer to the screenshot below for details.
How to Use this Template?
As a user, you can start right away with the template to plan your travel. Start with your total budget.
#1 – Total Budget:
The total budget is an amount you would have kept aside for the travel. This is an estimated number that you would have earmarked as your budget. Start with an amount which will not result in the stretching of your finance. If you have this figure in your mind in advance, you will do well in populating the next section of expenses. If your budget and expected expenses are not in sync, this section will have to be worked on again and again.
#2 – Expenses:
Once you have earmarked your travel budget, you can move on to expenses. In the template, the expenses have been grouped under five basic categories, namely transportation, lodging, food, entertainment, and others.
All these categories have further sub-heads that can be directly populated in the table. Following is how we unpack these categories.
#3 – Transportation:
Transportation expenses will include all your flight expenses, which might form a big chunk of your overall expenses. Transportation further includes taxi/bus/metro/trains, driving and parking. You would need to calculate the total number of units including to and from. The measure of units and the per-unit cost is shown in parentheses in the line item.
#4 – Lodging:
Lodging will include the cost of living, mainly hotels. You can input other sorts of expenses like resorts, apartments, etc. in the hotel section only. You can also add rows to incorporate more detail if you will be changing accommodations during the travel. You can then put the number of days of stay in each hotel and cost per day in each hotel to arrive at your total lodging expenses.
#5 – Food:
Food is also an important expense while traveling as travelers love to explore food when they visit different places within or outside their countries. The food expense is further broken down into three meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Calculate the number of meals for all days and put a cumulative number in the quantity field. The cost per meal is self-explanatory.
#6 – Entertainment:
Entertainment expenses can include the cost of visiting amusement parks, indulging in activities, watching shows, visiting museums, etc. There could be a long list of things you could be doing on a trip. If you want to list them separately, you can add rows and properly categorize them in the category row for it to show up correctly in the pie chart.
#7 – Other:
All other expenses like shopping and purchases are bunched into others. Make sure you categorize expenses right for them to show in the pie chart.
The basic work that one needs to do before travel is to decide on which places will he be traveling and how long will they stay is going to be at each place. It can be a good exercise to list expenses of different places separately by adding rows to make a more precise assumption on the expenses. Accounting for different places to travel separately will be a good exercise because the cost of traveling including food, lodging, and transportation will be different for different places.
Conclusion
While planning travel, one must research the approximate costs of all the heads to arrive at a good estimate of expenses. Without research, the estimated cost and actual cost may differ significantly putting the user’s entire travel budget at risk.
The user must make sure to add the right category while adding rows for the pie chart to be correctly updated. In the case of shortfalls, one can increase the budget or rework the expenses to bring the travel expenses under budget.
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This has been a guide to the travel budget template. Here we provide you with a free downloadable travel budget template that is used to plan their travel budgets by putting in their budgets. Also, you can download and use this template in Excel, PDF or in CSV format.
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