Set Up Budgets

Set Up Budgets is where you write down what you expect each account to do, month by month, for a fiscal year. Your income and expense accounts run down the side and the twelve months of the fiscal year across the top, as in a spreadsheet. What you save here is what Budget vs Actual and the budget reports measure your real results against.

You can budget the whole company, or give a single class or a single customer job a budget of its own, and you can build a Balance Sheet budget of month-end balances as well as the usual Profit and Loss budget.

Opening the page

• Company ▸ Planning & Budgeting ▸ Set Up Budgets

It opens over the Home Page; Esc takes you back to the Home Page. It needs permission for Budget vs Actual.

The page opens on the current fiscal year's Profit and Loss budget for the whole company. The fiscal year follows the First month of the fiscal year in Edit ▸ Preferences… ▸ Accounting: a year starting in April runs April to March, and the months across the top follow it.

The page at a glance

Top row

Choosing which budget

Each combination is a separate budget. The company budget, a class's budget and a job's budget for the same year are stored apart and never added together. Subdivide by appears once your books support class and job budgets.

With Balance Sheet chosen, the note Each month is the balance budgeted at its end. reminds you that each cell is a balance, not a month's movement.

The grid

Under each group (Income and Expenses; or Assets, Liabilities and Equity) a Total line adds the group up month by month. A Profit and Loss budget ends with Net Income: income less expenses for each month and for the year.

The bar at the bottom reminds you Double-click a month to copy it to the months after it., shows Unsaved changes while there are any, and holds Save.

Create a budget, step by step

1. Open Set Up Budgets and use ‹ / › to reach the fiscal year.
2. Choose Profit and Loss or Balance Sheet.
3. For a class or job budget, set Subdivide by and pick the class or job.
4. Start the figures in one of three ways:
   • type them month by month;
   • choose From last year's actuals to start from what really happened; or
   • type the first month of a row and use → to copy it to the rest of the year.
5. Refine them:
   • double-click any month to copy its amount to every month after it in that row;
   • use a row's % button to raise or lower that row;
   • use Adjust all… to change the whole budget by a percentage.
6. Choose Save. The message Budget for FY… saved. confirms it.

Starting from last year's actual figures

From last year's actuals reads the general ledger for the previous fiscal year and puts each account's figure for each month into the matching month of this year:

• On a Profit and Loss budget, each cell is the account's net movement that month (income as credits less debits, expenses as debits less credits).
• On a Balance Sheet budget, each cell is the account's balance at that month's end last year.
• For a class or job budget, only entries coded to that class or job are read.

An amber line says Filled from last fiscal year's actual figures — nothing is saved until you press Save. Adjust the figures, then Save.

Adjusting by a percentage

Adjust Row Amounts (the row's % button) and Adjust all… open the same window with one field: Increase each monthly amount by (use − to decrease), in percent. Type 5 to raise every amount by 5%, or -10 to lower it by 10%, and choose OK. Empty cells stay empty; only months with an amount change. A zero changes nothing.

Saving, and what is stored

• Save writes every row on the page. A row whose cells are all empty is removed from the budget.
• Only accounts of the right kind for the budget are saved.
• Moving to another year, or changing the budget type, class or job, while there are unsaved changes asks Discard your changes? with Keep editing and Discard.
• A budget changes nothing in your books. It posts no entries and does not appear on the Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet; it is only compared with them.

Validation messages

Where budgets are used

• Company ▸ Planning & Budgeting ▸ Budget vs Actual — the company Profit and Loss budget against what was posted, with favourable and adverse variances.
• Reports ▸ Budgets & Forecasts — Budget Overview, Budget vs. Actual, Profit & Loss Budget Performance, Budget vs. Actual by Class, Budget vs. Actual by Job and Balance Sheet Budget Overview. See Budgets & Forecasts reports.

Permissions

Viewing the page needs access to Budget vs Actual under Accounting. Saving needs the right to edit accounts on the Chart of Accounts or to create general journal entries.

Tips

• Build the company budget first, then class or job budgets for the parts of the business you manage separately.
• Budget the big lines (sales, cost of goods sold, wages, rent) carefully and leave small accounts empty; Budget vs Actual still lists accounts with activity and no budget, so nothing is hidden.
• Seasonal businesses: start from last year's actuals rather than copying one month across, so the seasons come with it.

Common problems

• An account is missing from the grid. It is inactive, or it is not an income or expense account (Profit and Loss) or an asset, liability or equity account (Balance Sheet).
• The months start in the wrong place. Check First month of the fiscal year in Edit ▸ Preferences… ▸ Accounting.
• Save is greyed out. Nothing has changed since the last save.
• "From last year's actuals" fills zeros. Nothing was posted in those months last year, or posting was not switched on then (see Accounting Setup).