For those of you that serve as coaches or team managers for club soccer teams, one of least enjoyable tasks is the collection of the money from the parents for the team fees.  If you need a primer on the difference between team fees and club fees, check out this article.  If you are here, you likely already know the difference.  As a general rule, I only like to collect team fees once, so an accurately planned budget is important.

Here is the template google workbook I use each year.  2024 2025 Budget Template Feel free to make a copy and start your own team workbook.

Budget Creation

Creating a good soccer team budget is not difficult, but the coach must give clear guidance on what the expectations for the year are and the manager must do some research into the costs associated with that plan.  I have found that using the template below makes the budget process simple as the manager and coach can just sit down and “fill it” out. 

The Budget generally consists of the following:

1. Tournament Entry Fees
2. Ref Fees
3. Various other costs that are very team dependant such as:
   1. First Aid Kit;
   2. Video Costs if the team has that in the plan
   3. A team Tent and Bench (if a new team or if new players are added, it is fair to share that cost);
   4. Coach costs like supplies (dry erase markers, boards, etc.), hotel (if your team is going out of the area for tournaments); 
   5. A team party, etc.;
   6. Other league fees at higher levels of play.

Determining Budgeted Costs

The costs that vary the most are the tournament fees.  A flight 3 team as opposed to an NPL or above team will likely be attending very different tournaments and those tournaments have very different costs.  So ensure that you talk with the coach and then go to the website for each potential event to get an idea of the cost.  Typically, the costs are listed very plainly like on this page for the Aliso Cup.

After you add up all the costs, then you divide that by the number of players on the team and that will be your per player amount.  The linked budget is set up for you already, if you edit cell B17 (in yellow) then it will do the math for you for the cost per player in cell E15.

Ref fees are also similarly set up, if you adjust your per game ref fee cost in cell B21, it will adjust the cost in cell D9 (but you may have to manually change the number of games if you are doing more than the number annotated in the template).

Template Soccer Team Budget

An example simple 7 v 7 budget is below and there is a link here for you to view 2024 2025 Template  I recommend clicking the link to view the budget document.

It is easier to refund money at the end of the year than trying to collect more money, so err on the side of collecting more. 

Lastly, remember this is not your money as the manager, it is not the club’s money and it is not the coach’s money.  The funds belong to the parents and are just being held and managed by the manager for convenience, so I really suggest using the check and cash register tab in the template to track all the funds.

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