Monitor marketing expenses, campaign costs, and ROI across all channels
✓ Free to download · ✓ Excel 2016+ and Google Sheets · ✓ Custom version in 24h
Marketing budgets are usually allocated by channel and judged by channel, which guarantees the channels that assist rather than close get cut. This template tracks planned, spent and attributed revenue together.
The actual columns, with sample rows
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Channel | Planned | Spent | Revenue | ROI | % of budget |
| 2 | Paid search | 60,000 | 58,400 | 184,200 | 3.2 | 38.9% |
| 3 | Content & SEO | 36,000 | 34,100 | 128,900 | 3.8 | 22.7% |
| 4 | Events | 30,000 | 31,800 | 44,000 | 1.4 | 21.2% |
| 5 | Paid social | 24,000 | 25,900 | 38,600 | 1.5 | 17.2% |
Why each one is written the way it is
=IF([@Spent]=0,"",[@Revenue]/[@Spent])
Return per euro spent by channel. Useful, and dangerous read alone — see the scenario below.
=[@Spent]/SUM(Channels[Spent])
Share of budget, which is what you are really deciding when you reallocate.
=SUMIFS(Spend[Amount],Spend[Channel],[@Channel],Spend[Month],"<="&CurrentMonth)
Spend to date from the transaction sheet, so plan and actual are never both typed.
=([@Planned]/12*MonthsElapsed)-[@Spent]
Pacing against a straight-line plan. A channel 40% underspent in month nine will not spend it well in month twelve.
A worked example with real numbers
A B2B company ranked channels on last-click ROI and moved the events budget into paid search. Pipeline fell the following quarter. Adding first-touch alongside last-touch showed events originating 34% of opportunities that paid search later closed — events were the introduction, search was the return visit. Restoring the events budget at 70% recovered the pipeline; the reporting change was what made the mistake visible.
Tab by tab
| Tab | Contents |
|---|---|
| Channels | Plan, spend and attributed revenue per channel. |
| Spend | Transaction-level marketing spend. |
| Attribution | First-touch and last-touch revenue side by side. |
| Pacing | Spend against plan by month. |
| README | Which attribution model each column uses. |
What is included, and what to look at next
Specific to this workbook, not generic
Look at first-touch and last-touch together and treat the gap as information. A single model always flatters one part of the funnel; the disagreement between two is where the insight is.
5–10% for established B2B, 15–25% for growth-stage or consumer. The wide range is why benchmarks are less useful than your own trailing ROI.
Track them by holdout instead: pause in one region for a quarter and measure the difference. Brand and PR resist attribution and are not therefore worthless.
"This budget tracker has helped us optimize our marketing spend across channels. The ROI insights are invaluable for planning future campaigns."