Every budget is a blueprint. However, for too many government finance teams, that blueprint gets buried under a pile of outdated, duplicated spreadsheets —none of which are built to track actual impact.
Enter performance-based budgeting (PBB): a powerful way to connect dollars to outcomes. But let’s be honest, most teams know why it matters. The real challenge is making it manageable.
That’s where structure, automation, and innovative tools come in. And if you’re in the midst of spreadsheet survival, this blog is your map out.
What is Performance-Based Budgeting?
Performance-based budgeting is a method that links funding decisions to results. Rather than allocating funds based on historical spending or department size, it asks:
- What outcomes are we trying to achieve?
- What activities or programs support those outcomes?
- Are those programs practical and cost-effective?
The goal? Spend smarter, not just more.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), “PBB shifts the focus of budgeting from inputs to outcomes, encouraging governments to prioritize measurable results over spending habits.”
See the GFOA’s Best Practices: Performance Management for a broader overview.
Why Performance Budgeting Is Gaining Momentum
- Elected officials want impact, not line items
- Citizens want transparency, not jargon
- Staff want a budget process that connects to their actual work
And let’s not forget the auditors and analysts who appreciate a clean logic chain from dollar to deliverable.
Whether you’re a large city or a small special district, performance budgeting helps you:
- Justify new funding
- Evaluate existing programs
- Tell a better story to your council, community, and credit rating agencies
So why isn’t everyone doing it?
The Spreadsheet Trap
Most teams that attempt PBB start with good intentions—and a massive Excel workbook. Tabs for KPIs, cost centers, performance metrics, and program codes. A web of cross-references and fragile formulas.
You know what comes next:
- Hours of manual updates
- Broken links between narrative and data
- Night-before-the-meeting panic edits
- Limited visibility across teams
Performance budgeting may be strategic, but spreadsheets make it feel survivalist. For a deeper dive into common pitfalls, see GFOA’s “Rethinking Budgeting”.
The Gravity Approach: Smarter Structure for Better Strategy
Gravity Budget Studio is designed to bring structure, consistency, and visibility to performance-based budgeting, without making it feel like a second full-time job.
Here’s how it works:
🧩 Program-Based Structure
Budget items can be tied directly to departments, divisions, or programs, allowing you to group and analyze funding by purpose, not just account code.
🎯 Outcome Tagging
Each program can be linked to specific goals or strategic pillars, helping teams measure impact over time and show alignment with council priorities.
📊 Integrated Metrics
Performance metrics can be embedded alongside budget narratives and updated automatically across reports. No reformatting, no double entry.
🧠 Scenario Modeling
Test what happens when a program is reduced, expanded, or restructured—without losing the performance narrative.
Customer Snapshot: Rochester Hills, MI
When Rochester Hills revamped its budget process, performance-based budgeting was a key goal. They needed to demonstrate how each department’s budget aligned with their strategic priorities, but their previous method involved juggling multiple spreadsheets and Word documents.
With Gravity, they:
- Linked strategic goals to every budget item
- Created performance snapshots embedded in each department’s narrative
- Streamlined council presentations by showing how funding aligned with city-wide objectives
Their budget book didn’t just look better. It told a clearer story.
“We now have one platform that connects dollars to impact, and it’s changed how we talk about our budget with council and the public.”
— Rochester Hills Finance Director
How to Start Simple (and Survive)
You don’t have to rebuild your budget model overnight. Here are five steps to get started with performance-based budgeting—even if you’re still in spreadsheet mode:
- Define 3–5 city-wide or district-wide goals
Use your strategic plan or council priorities as your north star. - Assign programs to those goals
Even a rough mapping is better than none. - Track one outcome metric per program
Please keep it simple. Focus on the data you already have. - Flag programs that aren’t aligned
Ask: Are these worth continued funding? - Use digital tools to centralize this logic
Gravity allows you to map programs, dollars, and metrics in one place.
Explore our Budget Studio overview to see how this structure plays out.
Your Budget Is More Than a Number—It’s a Narrative
Performance budgeting helps you tell that story. When you tie funding to results, you shift the budget from a spreadsheet to a strategy. You move from tracking costs to demonstrating value.
And best of all? You don’t have to go it alone—or stitch it together with macros and color-coded cells.
📘 Want to see how Gravity can help your team connect funding to results?
Request a walkthrough of Budget Solutions →