As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create a budget for your UK small 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 your current bookkeeping records, bank statements and sales records, then gather the figures for opening cash, sales, customer payment timing, regular costs, payroll, VAT, tax, loans and planned spending.
   2. Create a single spreadsheet with one row per income or cost item, columns for amount, VAT treatment, payment month, frequency and source, and a separate section for assumptions you are making.
   3. Paste the spreadsheet contents and the business details into the prompt, replacing each bracketed slot with your figures or writing "unknown" where you do not have a reliable figure.
   4. Ask the chatbot to produce the budget in a table that you can copy into a spreadsheet, including monthly income, costs, cash movement, closing cash, assumptions, missing inputs and scenarios.
   5. Copy the result into a spreadsheet and compare every source figure, VAT label, payment month and opening balance against the records you gathered; correct the spreadsheet formulas where the copied output does not reconcile.
   6. Give the completed budget and its assumptions to your accountant for any decision involving tax treatment, VAT, payroll, borrowing, dividends or a serious cash shortfall.

   Prompt

   Create a practical budget for my UK small business using the information below. Use pounds sterling and label every figure clearly as excluding VAT, including VAT or VAT not applicable. Separate sales, direct costs, overheads, payroll, drawings or dividends, VAT, business taxes, loan payments, capital spending and other cash movements. Show the budget by month, with opening cash, expected money in, expected money out, closing cash and a running cash balance. Keep accounting profit separate from cash flow.
   
   Business type and accounting basis: [sole trader, partnership or limited company; cash or accrual basis]
   Business activity: [description]
   Budget period: [start month and end month]
   Opening bank balance: [amount]
   Expected sales by month: [figures and whether they include VAT]
   Expected payment timing: [when customers pay]
   Direct costs by month: [figures and payment timing]
   Overheads: [rent, utilities, software, insurance, marketing and other costs, with frequency]
   Staff and payroll: [wages, employer costs and payment timing]
   Owner drawings or company dividends: [figures and timing]
   VAT position: [VAT registered, expected registration or not registered, and filing or payment timing if known]
   Tax provisions or payments: [figures and timing if known]
   Loans and finance: [balance, repayments, interest and timing]
   Planned equipment or other capital spending: [figures and timing]
   Other known commitments or risks: [details]
   
   Do not invent missing figures or assume that a cost is deductible, that a business is VAT registered, or that a tax treatment is correct. If information is missing, mark it as a question and show a clearly labelled assumption only where I have supplied one. Produce a clean budget table, a short list of assumptions, a list of missing inputs, a break-even or minimum-sales view where the supplied data supports it, and three scenarios based only on stated assumptions. Flag any month with a negative closing cash balance. Explain the formulas in plain English and identify which figures I should confirm with my accountant. This is not professional advice.

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