Church budget calculator
Enter your expected annual income and get a starting budget breakdown by category. The percentages follow common healthy ranges — adjust any of them to match your church's plan.
Personnel
Salaries, housing allowance, benefits
Facilities & operations
Mortgage/rent, utilities, insurance, upkeep
Ministry & programs
Worship, youth, education, benevolence
Missions & outreach
Local and global giving
Reserves
Savings for emergencies & repairs
A starting point, not a rule — every church is different. See the ranges and reasoning in church budget percentages.
How to use these numbers
Most healthy church budgets put roughly half toward personnel, about a quarter toward facilities, and the rest across ministry, missions, and reserves. Use this as a sanity check against your draft budget: if personnel is creeping well past half, fixed staff costs may be crowding out ministry and your cushion for a slow giving season. The full method — estimating income, planning by ministry, and reviewing budget-versus-actual — is in how to build a church budget.
From plan to actuals, automatically
Vestrybooks puts your budget in, then shows budget-versus-actual as money comes and goes — so the plan stays a living tool, not a forgotten spreadsheet.