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Free County Budget & Absorption Tracker (Excel)

The single question in every county budget review is absorption: how much of the allocated budget has actually been spent. This free tracker answers it per department and for the county as a whole, splitting recurrent and development spending, and flagging under- and over-spend automatically.

Download — Excel (.xlsx) ↓Opens in Excel or Google Sheets · no sign-up

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Download the file above.
Open Google Drive, then New → File upload and choose the file.
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The .xlsx format opens free in Google Sheets, LibreOffice, or Excel for the web — no paid software required.

What's inside

Absorption % per vote and county-wide (spent ÷ budget)
Recurrent and development kept separate, each with its own rate
Variance (budget − spent) and over/under-spend flags
Status per department: On track / Behind / Overspent
Formulas locked; safe to share with a budget committee

The tabs

Start Here (guide)
Budget
Dashboard

Yellow cells only. You type in the yellow cells; the rest are locked formulas. Gridlines are off and it prints clean on A4.

On the Budget tab, list each department (vote) with its recurrent and development budget and what has been spent against each. The tracker computes total budget, total spent, absorption % and the variance, and marks each vote's status. The Dashboard rolls the whole county up — overall absorption, recurrent vs development split, and the departments furthest behind.

Development absorption is usually the weak spot, so the tracker keeps recurrent and development apart and shows each rate separately. The formulas are locked and only the yellow cells accept typing, so it can go round a budget committee safely.

Pair it with the NG-CDF Project Tracker for project-level detail, and with the Policy Sandbox to model how a budget change ripples through the economy.

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Custom work

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Frequently asked questions

What is a good absorption rate?

It depends on the point in the financial year, but development absorption below about 50-60% by year-end is usually flagged as under-performance. The tracker shows the rate so you can judge it against your own targets.

Why split recurrent and development?

Because they behave differently. Recurrent (salaries, operations) usually absorbs fully; development (projects) is where delays show. Keeping them separate makes the real story visible.

Can I use it for a department or a whole county?

Either. Use one row per department for a county view, or one row per programme within a single department. The absorption and variance logic works at any level.

NG-CDF Project Tracker →Policy Analyst toolkit →Policy Sandbox →All templates →