Managing the budget for any aspect of a business is an important undertaking. The e-business budget needs to be estimated and secured each year and then managed responsibly to ensure that the objective for the e-business is achieved.
The e-business budget should be dealt with as you would any of the traditional budget items. It might be seen as a unique item in the overall budget and given its own allocation. Alternatively, its various costs might be spread across other departments (eg the cost of promoting it allocated to the Marketing Department and the hosting costs to the IT Department).
A combination of both models might be appropriate.
What to do
You may feel that estimating the annual e-business budget is a daunting task. However, it need not be so difficult to assess. It merely needs to be approached in a systematic manner.
Using a spreadsheet program as the tool, the following process can be used to estimate the annual budget:
- Identify the cost centres for all aspects of the e-business in the nominated twelve month period.
- Define the individual parts of each cost centre (as far as practicable).
- Estimate the days involved in delivering each component during the period.
- Determine what functions are to be outsourced and what is to be done by staff.
- Apply an average hourly salary allocation, fee rate, cost of purchase, annual license or lease, as appropriate, to each cost centre.
- Factor in a contingency allowance - about 7.5%.
The sum total of these amounts provides an estimate of the cost of your e-business for a given twelve month period.
One budget period is not necessarily going to be the same as another. The first budget period often includes the (re)development of the site, which is a significant cost. Subsequent budget periods may require less money but beware: maintaining, evaluating, testing and enhancing a site will usually exceed the initial development cost.
Download this Microsoft ExceI spreadsheet and use it to help you calculate the cost of establishing your site. You may need to add cost centres and additional personnel involved in certain stages to meet your own circumstances. 
e-businessguide Template Document - Sample Budget for Building a Website (24 kb)
e-businessguide Case Study - Animal & Odd Bod Creators Pty Ltd (125 kb)
Planning - Key issues to consider - Estimating the budget 
