As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create separate budgets for your business departments.

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 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the latest management accounts, general ledger export or bookkeeping report and list the departments, income lines, direct costs and shared costs used by the business.
   2. Gather payroll, contractor, rent, software, supplier commitment and planned investment figures for the budget period, keeping each figure tied to its source.
   3. Decide whether the budget should be VAT-inclusive or VAT-exclusive and write down the rule for allocating shared costs such as rent, software and central staff.
   4. Paste the business context, source data, allocation rules and requested scenarios into the prompt, then ask the chatbot to produce the tables and formulas.
   5. Copy the result into Excel or Google Sheets and compare every source figure, departmental total and business total with the original accounts and supporting records.
   6. Ask the department leads or finance colleague to approve the shared-cost allocations, targets, missing inputs and scenarios before using the budget for spending or staffing decisions.

   Prompt

   Create a separate monthly and annual budget for each department in this UK business using only the information below. Do not invent figures, departments, categories or assumptions.
   
   Business context:
   - Business type: [business type]
   - Budget period: [period]
   - Departments: [list of departments]
   - Currency: GBP
   - VAT treatment: [VAT-inclusive, VAT-exclusive, or explain the treatment]
   
   Source data:
   - Historical income by department: [paste data]
   - Historical direct costs by department: [paste data]
   - Historical shared costs: [paste data]
   - Proposed headcount, salaries and contractor costs: [paste data]
   - Known commitments and price changes: [paste data]
   - Department targets or constraints: [paste data]
   - Rules for allocating shared costs: [paste rules, or state that no rule has been supplied]
   
   Produce:
   1. A clearly labelled departmental budget table by month and for the full period.
   2. Separate income, direct costs, shared costs, payroll, other operating costs and operating surplus or deficit where the data supports them.
   3. Formulas or calculation steps for every total and allocation.
   4. A reconciliation showing that departmental totals agree with the business total.
   5. A list of missing inputs, ambiguous classifications and assumptions that need my approval.
   6. Three scenarios using only changes I specify: base, [scenario name], and [scenario name]. If I have not supplied scenario changes, do not create numerical scenarios.
   7. A short list of questions for the budget owner before this is used for decisions.
   
   Present the result in tables that can be copied into Excel or Google Sheets. Keep source figures distinct from estimates. Flag any item that may need confirmation from the bookkeeper or accountant. This is management planning, not professional advice, and it does not replace an accountant's review of accounts, tax or statutory reporting.

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