As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create a budget for your new UK business.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a blank spreadsheet and create sheets named Inputs, Budget, Scenarios and Checks.
   2. Gather supplier quotes, rent or workspace costs, insurance estimates, software prices, equipment costs, stock costs, finance terms and any planned staff or contractor costs.
   3. Write down your business structure, planned start date, prices, expected sales timing, opening cash and VAT position, marking unknown items as unknown rather than estimating them.
   4. Paste the gathered information into the prompt and send it to a chatbot, then copy its assumptions, questions and spreadsheet-ready tables into the matching sheets.
   5. Enter each provided figure in Inputs and keep the source beside it, separating one-off costs, recurring costs, income, tax-related items and financing.
   6. Build the monthly Budget and Scenarios sheets from the supplied formulas, then compare every cost and price against the relevant quote, invoice, bank record or GOV.UK guidance.
   7. Check the lowest projected cash balance, remove any figure that cannot be sourced, answer the model's unresolved questions and ask an accountant to review tax, VAT, payroll and company-specific assumptions before committing money.

   Prompt

   Create a practical startup budget for my UK business using the information below. Produce a spreadsheet-ready table with columns for category, item, timing, one-off cost, recurring cost, VAT treatment, assumption, source and confidence. Separate startup costs, monthly operating costs, expected income and cash balance. Show the first year by month and include a cautious case, a central case and an optimistic case without inventing figures. Use pounds sterling and label every figure as provided, calculated or assumed. Do not guess missing costs or sales. Where information is missing, ask a concise question or leave the cell blank. Do not give tax, VAT, legal or regulated financial advice. Flag anything that should be checked with an accountant, including corporation tax, Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT registration, payroll, pension costs and allowable expenses. Use these business details and source figures:
   
   Business type and trading structure: [sole trader, limited company or undecided]
   Business activity: [description]
   Planned start date: [date or undecided]
   Location in the UK: [nation and town or region]
   Products or services and prices: [details]
   Expected sales volume and timing: [details]
   Opening cash available: [amount]
   Equipment and setup costs: [details]
   Premises and utilities: [details]
   Software, insurance, professional fees and other regular costs: [details]
   Stock, materials, delivery and payment fees: [details]
   Staff, contractors and payroll plans: [details]
   Loans, grants or finance: [details]
   VAT status or assumption: [details]
   Other constraints or known costs: [details]
   
   Before producing the final budget, list the assumptions and unresolved questions. Then provide the budget, explain the formulas in plain English, identify the month with the lowest cash balance and list the figures I must verify against invoices, quotes, bank information or GOV.UK. This is a planning document, not professional advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.