It is the end of October and your accountant wants next year's cost plan. IT gets one number: this year's spend plus 10%. In March the file server dies, in July the Microsoft 365 renewal arrives higher than last year, and the integration project planned for spring slides to "later" because the money went into firefighting.
This post lets you build a 2027 IT budget in 2–3 hours, in three buckets plus a reserve, and decide what you fund and what you consciously postpone. No tools needed, only data your accounting already has.
Three buckets instead of one number
A single "IT" line mixes costs that behave very differently. Split the budget into three buckets and a reserve.
- Run costs. Everything you pay so the company works tomorrow the way it works today: licences and subscriptions (Microsoft 365, ERP, antivirus/EDR, backup), internet lines, the domain, IT support, service contracts. Almost nothing here can be cut without risk.
- Hardware replacement. Laptops, desktops, printers, network gear, server or NAS, by age. With a 4–5 year cycle that is roughly 20–25% of workstations each year.
- Projects. Changes meant to produce a result: an integration, a new ERP module, a migration, automating a process. Each project has an owner and a one-sentence description of the outcome.
- Reserve. 10–15% of the first two buckets combined, for breakdowns and things you cannot foresee.
At clients with 10–50 staff we typically see run costs of 2,500–5,000 PLN (about 600–1,150 EUR) per employee per year, including outsourced IT support. If you land well above that, run an IT cost audit before you plan new spending.
The most common mistake: projects and run costs sit on the same line. Then every outage eats project money, and after a year it turns out the company paid only to stand still.
What gets more expensive or stops being optional in 2027
A few items deserve a separate check, because prices or rules have changed.
Microsoft 365. Microsoft raised business plan prices from 1 July 2026, and the new price applies from the first renewal after that date. In the USD price list Business Basic went from 6 to 7 dollars per user per month, Business Standard from 12.50 to 14 dollars, and Business Premium stayed unchanged (source: Office Watch). Prices in PLN from your reseller may differ, so check your renewal date and ask for a written quote. For 30 Business Standard accounts the increase alone is about 2,000 PLN (about 470 EUR) a year.
Windows 10. Support ended on 14 October 2025. Paid ESU security updates for businesses cost 61 dollars per device in year one, and the price doubles every year; if you join in year two, you also pay for year one (source: Microsoft Learn). Year two of ESU is therefore 122 dollars per PC, and year three 244. Put any PC that cannot run Windows 11 into the replacement bucket, not into run costs.
KSeF. Poland's mandatory e-invoicing system, KSeF, still allows one exemption until 31 December 2026: a taxpayer whose invoiced sales do not exceed 10,000 PLN gross per month may issue invoices outside KSeF (source: ksef.podatki.gov.pl). If your group has a small company or business that relied on this, from January it needs a working KSeF integration. Also budget hours for maintaining your existing ERP–KSeF integration, because schema and certificate changes do not handle themselves.
ERP renewals. Polish ERP systems such as Comarch Optima, enova365 or Subiekt carry annual update fees or subscriptions. Check the indexation clause and renewal date in your contract instead of assuming the amount will match this year's.
How to build the budget in 3 hours
Do not start with a spreadsheet of categories. Start with what you have already paid.
- Pull the costs from accounting. Ask for a list of invoices from IT vendors over the last 12 months: vendor, amount, what for. In Comarch Optima or enova365 this is a purchase register report filtered by vendor. It usually comes to 15–40 items.
- Assign each item to a bucket. For every subscription, add the renewal date and the number of licences. Mark licences without a user in red.
- List the hardware with its age. A column with the purchase year is enough. A laptop older than 5 years, or one that cannot run Windows 11, goes to replacement; spread the rest so you replace a similar number of workstations each year. We covered how to set the cycle in the post on when to replace laptops and IT hardware.
- Write down at most three projects. For each: owner, outcome in one sentence, cost range and starting quarter. Integrating two systems in an SME typically costs 15,000–60,000 PLN (about 3,500–14,000 EUR) and takes 4–10 weeks.
- Add the reserve and spread spending across quarters. Large renewals and hardware replacements should not land in the same month.
You need the owner or finance director, the person responsible for IT (internal or external), and the accountant for the first half hour.
Two examples from recent budgets
Where it worked. At one of our clients, a 24-person electrical wholesaler running Comarch Optima and Microsoft 365 Business Standard, we built the 2026 budget in three buckets over two meetings, about 5 hours in total. Run costs: 86,000 PLN, replacing 8 laptops: 38,000 PLN, one project (courier integration with the ERP): 45,000 PLN, reserve: 15,000 PLN (about 20,000, 8,800, 10,500 and 3,500 EUR). In May the NAS holding the document archive failed. Replacement and data recovery cost 11,000 PLN (about 2,600 EUR) and came out of the reserve, and the integration project started on schedule. The year will close about 4% under plan. What we would do differently: the NAS was 7 years old and should have gone straight into the replacement bucket, not the reserve.
Where it cost more. In one project, a 35-person furniture manufacturer on enova365 planned IT as "last year plus 10%". In autumn 2025, 14 computers on the shop floor and in the office did not meet Windows 11 requirements. The company bought the first year of ESU, about 3,000 PLN (about 700 EUR), and postponed the decision. In summer 2026, before the second ESU year, it had to buy 14 computers at once for about 63,000 PLN (about 14,700 EUR). The money was moved from a management reporting project, which dropped out of the plan for two quarters. The lesson: a replacement spread over two budgets, 7 units each, could have been funded without touching the project.
What can go wrong
Three buckets are not always a good idea. In a 10-person office spending 30,000–40,000 PLN (about 7,000–9,500 EUR) a year on IT, a renewal list with dates and a reserve is enough. Splitting buckets will take more time than it saves.
The reserve has its own trap. If nobody decides who may use it, in December it goes on "anything, so it doesn't expire", and in March nobody dares to touch it during a real outage. Write down one sentence: the IT person decides on reserve spending up to a set amount, the owner above it.
The most expensive mistake is cutting run costs when you need savings. Dropping Microsoft 365 backup or EDR frees a few thousand PLN a year, while one incident usually costs more than several years of those fees. Cut projects first, then extend the replacement cycle by a year, and touch run costs last.
Leasing hardware smooths the replacement bucket, but you pay the lessor's margin and sign a 3–4 year contract. It makes sense when you replace a dozen or more units at once and want to protect cash, not for two laptops a year.
What to do this week
- Ask your accountant for a list of invoices from IT vendors over the last 12 months.
- Check the subscription renewal date and the number of unassigned licences in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
- List the computers that cannot move to Windows 11 or are older than 5 years.
- Read the indexation clause and renewal date in your ERP contract.
- Pick at most three projects for 2027 and give each one an owner.
- Put in writing who decides on reserve spending, and up to what amount.
An IT budget is not last year's number plus 10%. It is three buckets and a reserve, so that an outage in March does not eat the project planned for spring.