Budgeting in QuickBooks^® Online

Did you know that QuickBooks^® Online (QBO) has a great budget tool?

Businesses use budgets for many reasons. Budgets can be used to plan for cash flow, meet staffing needs, identify supply chain needs, adjust expenses for seasonality, deal with upturns and downturns in revenue and expense, and to encourage accountability.

Here are the steps you need to take to create a budget in QuickBooks Online (QBO). Sign into QuickBooks Online as a user with permission to access, create, or delete budgets.

Step 1: Set the first month of your financial year.

Once you are logged in, make sure the beginning of your financial year is set in QuickBooks. It helps if you start at the beginning of the year, but you can create a budget any time. 

In QBO:

1. Go to Settings and select Account and settings
2. Select Advanced
3. In the Accounting section, review the First month of the financial year field. To change the date, select Edit.
   
   

Step 2: Gather your budget data

You can base your budget on data either from the current financial year or from the previous year’s amounts. A preliminary budget report shows actual transactions created during the current year to date.

Here’s how to customize the budget to use the previous financial year’s numbers:

1. Select Reports
2. Find and open the Profit and Loss Detail Report
3. To use the previous year’s data, select Last Financial Year (or Last Year if January is the first month of your financial year) from the Report period dropdown. To use data from the current financial year, select This Financial Year-to-date.
4. Select Run report
   
   

Step 3: Create your budget.

If you don’t want to build a completely unique budget, you can copy an existing one. Go to the “Edit, copy, or delete budgets” section. There are special budget reports that help you keep track of your budget goals.

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting
2. Find your budget on the list
3. Select the Action ▼ dropdown and then Run Budget Overview report or Run Budgets vs. Actuals report

Budgets by account are summarized in the Budget Overview report. The Budgets vs. Actuals report summarizes accounts alongside your actual account totals. It also shows how much you’re under or over budget.

Edit, copy or delete budgets.

If you need to edit a budget, make your changes right in QuickBooks:

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting
2. Find your budget on the list
3. Select Edit
4. Edit each account one month at a time
5. To change the time period from month-to-month to quarterly or yearly, select the Gear ⚙ at the top of the budget. Then select Quarter or Year
6. Select Save or Save and close
   
   

Copy an existing budget.

Instead of starting from scratch, you can create a copy of an existing budget. This helps you jumpstart this year’s budget by using last year’s data as a baseline.

1. Select Settings ⚙️ and then Budgeting.
2. Find the budget you want to copy.
3. Select the Action ▼ dropdown and then click Copy.
4. On the Copy Budget screen, enter the new budget name and fiscal year
5. Select Create Budget
6. Update budget amounts as necessary to match fiscal needs and goals
7. Select Save or Save and close

This process saves the copy budget as a new, separate budget.

Contact Mahoney with Questions

At Mahoney, we are happy to answer any questions you may have about QuickBooks Online (QBO) or budgeting.  Reach out to Associate Director and QuickBooks ProAdvisor Peggy Prall, CPA, and she can assist you in this matter.  Don’t miss our other QuickBooks blogs for more tips.

See also: Managing Pre-Payments in QuickBooks