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Writing a Technology Budget — Ideas in Action Chart

IDEA TAKE ACTION
If you’re a fiscal novice, learn a little about budgets and decide what type of budget you’ll be using.
It’s hard to recommend one type of budget over another, because the decision depends largely on your situation and your audience. This article from the Infopeople Web site will introduce you to some of the main types of budgets.
Pick a software tool to help you with creating your budget.
  • If you’re on a shoestring budget, you can start with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or the TechAtlas inventory tool. It will help primarily when you’re doing your technology budget, but you can export the results from TechAtlas and roll them into your larger organizational budget.
  • Techsoup offers steep discounts to libraries on accounting software from Sage, Intuit and Microsoft.
  • For more information, read A Few Good Accounting Packages on the Techsoup Web site.
Decide what expenses you’ll include in your budget projections.
  • If you have a recent technology budget, it helps to look there first, but if that’s all you do, it’s easy to perpetuate the oversights you made last year and the year before. If you’re worried that you might be forgetting something, take a look at a few sample technology budgets from the NPower Web site.
  • Another budgeting model that might help you think specifically about your technology spending is called Total cost of ownership.
  • As we mentioned earlier, ask other libraries and other city government departments if you can see their technology budget. They may have included items that you forgot.
Think about e-rate
  • Always look at the suggestions of the e-­rate administrators (USAC) if you plan to apply for e-­rate discounts in the near future (under the section titled “Elements of a Technology Plan,” look at the third element). If you don’t follow their advice, you may receive an unpleasant visit from Mr. Auditor.
  • The Alaska State Library has created a worksheet to help librarians track their technology expenses in terms that the e-­rate administrators will understand.
  • If you search for “e-rate budget requirements” on Google, you’ll find similar documents from other state libraries.
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