How to Build an Immigration Budget for 2027: A Practical Manual for HR

This is a step-by-step guide to building a 2027 immigration budget in a five-tab spreadsheet. It covers what to collect, who to ask, the exact questions to send, and how the tabs link through IDs so finance can follow every number.

Finance wants next year's immigration number, and last year's invoices plus your renewals list will cover part of it. The rest sits with recruiting, HRBPs, and department leaders: hiring plans, green card commitments that haven't started, and changes to roles that sponsored employees already hold.

Work through the eight steps below in order. Each one tells you who provides the information, gives you the question to send, and names the tab where the answer goes. The tabs link to each other through IDs, so the totals calculate from the rows underneath them.

Set up five tabs that link through IDs

Give every activity an ID such as A-001. Give every billing line an ID that carries its activity ID, such as A-001-B1, A-001-B2, and so on. One activity can have several invoices in different quarters, so it has several billing lines, and each billing line points back to its activity. Use employee or case IDs in the sheet and keep names out of it.

Every activity also carries three flags: In Base, In Expected, and In High, each set to Yes or No. A row that belongs in every scenario has Yes in all three. A row that belongs in only one scenario has Yes in that flag alone. The Costs and billing tab looks up the flags from the Activities tab using the activity ID, so you change a flag in one place. Step 7 explains how the flags produce the three scenarios.

Know who supplies each piece before you start

Step 1: Set up the Assumptions and Activities tabs before you collect anything

Create both tabs first so every answer you collect has a place to go. The Assumptions tab holds the settings that every other tab uses.

The Activities tab gets one row per activity. Mark each row as committed or tentative, which lets finance see which expenses depend on a business decision that hasn't been made.

Step 2: Ask your provider what you will pay for in 2027, and when

Send your sponsored employee list, active cases, and approved sponsorship commitments to your immigration provider, along with this question.

Add each activity to the Activities tab, and record each expected invoice as a billing line in Step 5. Include green card commitments that haven't started. If the company has approved sponsorship and the employee is waiting for someone to initiate it, that row needs an approval owner and a planning assumption. Existing cases and approved commitments carry Yes in all three flags.

Step 3: Convert openings into expected hires, then into sponsored hires, timing, and cost

Recruiters know the hiring plan. They may not know which roles will need sponsorship, because that depends on the candidates who enter the process. Ask for the information they have, including how many of those openings they expect to fill and when.

Adjust the job families to your business. Software engineers, researchers, and data scientists are examples. Use the roles where your company has previously hired sponsored employees. Put the results in the hiring table on the Assumptions tab.

Openings and completed hires are different numbers. A role opened in Q4 may be filled next year, and some roles may stay open. Run the calculation on expected hires, using the fill timing recruiting gives you. If recruiting can't estimate fill timing, use the expected start dates.

The sponsorship assumption is the share of past hires in that job family who needed sponsorship. Check whether next year's recruiting strategy resembles the years you pulled the history from. If the company is hiring in new locations or talent markets, the past share may not hold. If you don't have reliable history, enter your best estimate as the expected number and a higher number as the high number, and write down how you chose them. A documented range is easier to revisit than a single number nobody can explain.

Cost follows the same path. Immigration expenses may arise before the employee starts, so the quarter a sponsored hire costs money may differ from the quarter the person joins. Ask your provider for an estimate per case and for the stages that come before a start date.

Create two rows on the Activities tab for each hiring group. The first row uses the expected number of sponsored hires, with In Expected set to Yes and In Base and In High set to No. The second row uses the high number, with In High set to Yes and In Base and In Expected set to No. Multiply the number of sponsored hires on each row by the provider's estimate per case, and record the result as billing lines in the quarters your provider would bill it.

Step 4: Ask HRBPs which sponsored employees may change roles

Hiring is only one source of additional immigration work. Sponsored employees may be promoted, transferred, moved to another worksite, or affected by a reorganization.

Send each answer to counsel, who can assess whether the change requires immigration action and provide an estimate where appropriate. Not every change is a new filing, so the point is to get it in front of counsel early enough to understand the effect on timing and cost.

Add each role change to the Activities tab. An approved change carries Yes in all three flags, which puts it in the base. A tentative change you expect to be approved carries Yes in In Expected and In High and No in In Base, and it moves into the base once the business decision is approved.

Step 5: Record each invoice as a billing line and check what the estimate includes

The Costs and billing tab holds one row per expected invoice. Each row carries its own ID, links to an activity, and names one cost component. Fill in the scope columns for every quote before the amount goes into the sheet.

Use these cost components, and add a line for each one that applies:

• Legal or service fees.
• Applicable government fees.
• Recruitment expenses, where relevant.
• Premium processing, where available and approved.
• Translations, credential evaluations, delivery, or other expected expenses.
• Family-related expenses covered by company policy.

Ask how additional work is billed. If a quote excludes certain services, record that beside the estimate instead of assuming the quoted amount covers every possible development.

Check government fees against the current USCIS fee schedule, with your provider confirming which fees apply. Record the quote date and the fee-verification date on the Assumptions tab.

Step 6: Let the Summary tab calculate totals from the billing lines

A green card commitment can involve work across several years, and preparation, filing, and invoicing may happen at different points. Putting the whole process into 2027 may overstate next year's spending. Including only the next invoice may leave finance unaware of later commitments. Ask your provider to separate the stages.

Give each stage its own billing line with the date your provider would bill it. Any billing line dated after 2027 goes into the Later years column of the Summary.

Every Summary cell adds up billing line amounts. For the Q2 cell in the High row, add the Amount of every billing line where the billing quarter is Q2, the billing year is 2027, and In High is Yes. In a spreadsheet, that is a SUMIFS formula.

The same Summary explains variances during the year. An expense moving from Q2 to Q3 has a different budget implication from a newly approved sponsorship case.

Step 7: Show finance three scenarios and explain any reserve

Give finance a base forecast and a view of what could change it. The scenarios come from the flags on the Activities tab, so no one has to rebuild them by hand.

Decide which scenario finance is funding before you ask for a reserve. If finance funds the expected scenario, the reserve covers the gap between expected and high, and nothing beyond it. If finance funds the high scenario, that gap is already in the budget, so a reserve on top would count the same exposure twice. In that case, request a reserve only for risks the high scenario leaves out, and name them. Record on the Assumptions tab what the reserve covers, who can approve its use, and which scenario it sits on top of, so finance can evaluate a specific decision.

Step 8: Keep a review log and review the budget every quarter

Assign one person in HR to maintain the forecast, with input from recruiting, HRBPs, your immigration provider, and finance. Review it each quarter and after any significant hiring or organizational decision. Record every change on the Review log tab.

Use the log to record why spending changed. At each review, ask:

• Did work move to a different quarter?
• Did the company approve another sponsorship case?
• Did the scope of an existing matter change?
• Did a tentative role change become approved?

Estimates that are still unresolved stay in the log marked open, so finance can see which numbers may move. When a manager asks HR to promise sponsorship to a candidate, check three things before the promise is made: the estimated expense, the approval owner, and whether funding is available. The sheet should answer all three.

WayLit customers get their 2027 forecast created automatically

If you're a WayLit customer, we create your 2027 immigration forecast for you automatically, so you don't have to work through this exercise. If you aren't a customer yet and want to see how the forecast works, talk to our team.

What this spreadsheet may not capture

You will still have uncertainty. Provider estimates may change as cases develop, and government fees and processing rules may change during the year, so recheck the fee schedule at each quarterly review. Hiring assumptions built on past experience may not hold if the company changes its recruiting strategy, and family-related expenses depend on a company policy that may differ from one employee to the next.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult qualified immigration counsel before making decisions about your sponsored workforce.