Module 5: Financial, Resource and Risk Management

Topic 3: Preparing and managing a research project budget

Once you have received funding for your project and agreed to the allocation, you are ready to move onto the implementation. At this stage, you will need to set up your budget parameters and then make every effort to stick to them.

Learning outcomes

After completing this topic you should be able to:

• describe the difference between a project plan and a budget
• Set up a budget allocation for a project
• Review budget reports to check the budget is being well managed

Topic content:

Read the following notes:

• 3.1     What is a budget?    
• 3.2     The benefits of budgeting
• 3.3     Why do I need to prepare a budget for my research project?
• 3.4     What do I need to include in my budget?
• 3.5     Setting up the project budget
• 3.6     Creating processes and protocols for expenditure
• 3.7     Reporting systems
• 3.8     Monitoring and control

Activities

Activity 3:  Estimating your project costs

List all the likely costs that you might need to cover in your next project budget, or that you think are covered in a project you are familiar with. Now go to the Sample Costing Template to see if you have missed anything.  

Explore your university guides and check their rules and costings. Do you need to change anything?  (The more familiar you become with the costings and sources of guidance, the better.)

A Sample Budget Template is also provided for your consideration.  How easily would you be able to transfer the budget allocation from your proposal to this format?  (This is one of the challenges of working within a university system: the categories you identified for your request may not map directly with the university’s expenditure categories – you may need to split some funds into different cost codes to allow their tracking and reporting.)