operating budget

British

noun

accounting a forecast of the sales revenue, production costs, overheads, cash flow, etc, of an organization, used to monitor its trading activities, usually for one year

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

UC Santa Cruz — where the operating budget is a fraction of UCLA’s — recently reported a $95-million deficit.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 17, 2026

OceanX does not advertise the ship's cost or its operating budget, but its parent body's 2024 US tax filing reported over $44 million in expenses.

From Barron's • Jan. 26, 2026

If their large donors bunch all at the same time, their operating budget is going to dip every few years.

From MarketWatch • Dec. 19, 2025

While he said the budget would be focused on "investments", Carney has also promised to balance the federal operating budget - day-to-day spending on government programmes - over the next three years.

From BBC • Nov. 4, 2025

The extent to which colleges and universities rely on their endowments varies widely, but endowments can fund more than half the operating budget at some schools.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 16, 2025

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023