How to budget an FTC season

What a season costs

A first-year team buying a control system, tools and field elements typically spends between $4,000 and $8,000. An established team reusing all of that often runs $2,000–4,000. The budget template lists the line items with typical ranges.

The variance is almost entirely in three places: how many events you enter, whether you travel, and whether you already own a control system.

The four costs teams forget

• The second event. Teams budget one registration and enter three.
• Spare parts. Not a contingency — a line item. Ten to fifteen percent of your parts budget, ring-fenced, spent only on replacing what broke.
• Field elements. Most seasons reissue them, and soft tiles wear out.
• Championship travel. The cost of succeeding. Teams that advance and cannot afford to go are a real and avoidable outcome.

Budget by category, not by receipt

Track spend against categories that map to decisions — drivetrain, intake, control system, travel, outreach — rather than an undifferentiated list of purchases. "Can we afford a better intake?" is answerable from the first and not the second.

Count an order against the budget the day it is placed, not the day the card clears. A team that only counts settled transactions is always spending money it already committed.

Money moving through a team

Three things go wrong in almost every team, and all three are process problems rather than money problems.

Reimbursements vanish. A mentor buys $200 of aluminium, mentions it in passing, and it never gets paid back. Put a request in writing with the receipt attached, every time, even for small amounts.

Nobody knows the balance. If the answer lives in one adult's head, it is unavailable exactly when a purchase decision needs it. Put it somewhere the team can look.

Receipts are lost. Photograph every receipt when it is handed over, not at the end of the season. For a team under a 501(c)(3), this stops being an annoyance and becomes a compliance problem.

Where the money comes from

Most teams end up with a mix: school or district funding, sponsorships, grants, family contributions and fundraising. Diversify deliberately — a team funded entirely by one sponsor is one budget cycle away from not existing. Getting sponsors covers that side.

If donations are a meaningful share, being able to issue a tax-deductible receipt is worth more than any pitch improvement. That requires a 501(c)(3), your own or a fiscal sponsor's.

The handover

The season ends and the treasurer graduates. What next year needs is not a shoebox: it is what was spent per category, which sponsors gave what and who the contact was, what is still owed, and what the team already owns so it does not get bought twice.

If that lives in a shared system rather than one laptop, the handover is a login. If it does not, next year's team starts by reconstructing this one.