Create Your Budget

Common core steps to creating a trial budget include:

STEP 1: Prepare a draft budget

• Review your protocol/research plan
• Look at the protocol requirements and assign costs to each assessment/procedure and ensure the cost occurs each time the assessment occurs
• Enter costs into a budget template. See the sample budget template and tracking tool
• The budget must total the estimated per-participant costs plus all other fees
• Calculate cost per visit – and total cost per participant 

STEP 2: Assess feasibility

• Compare the total trial budget with projected income. Do you have enough funds to cover the cost of your trial from the beginning to the end?  How feasible is your protocol? 
• If not, need an achievable plan to source additional funding to cover the shortfall. Note the sponsoring institution may request to see this before agreeing to sponsor the trial.

STEP 3: Finalise budget

• Finalise agreement/contracts with participating sites.
• Note fee negotiation is common with international sites that are taking on additional responsibilities such as reporting to international regulatory agencies, facilitating lead ethics submission for a country on behalf of other sites.

Download tips for creating a trial budget

See Manage Your Budget for tips for how to track costs, i.e. forecast versus actual expenses.