Learn how to get your budgets into QuickBooks.
Many businesses create budgets to compare against their actual sales and expenses.
In QuickBooks Online Plus, you can create budgets based on your accounting data. Once your budgets are in QuickBooks, you can review and adjust everything. Then run financial reports to compare your actual sales and expenses with your budget.
Tip: You can make a budget at any time, but year-end is a great time to start planning for the year ahead.
Create budgets in QuickBooks Online
Sign in to QuickBooks as a user with permission to access, create, or delete budgets.
Step 1: Set the first month of your financial year
Make sure the beginning of your financial year is set in QuickBooks. You can create a budget any time, but it helps if you start at the beginning of the financial year.
- Sign in to QuickBooks Online.
- Go to Settings ⚙ and select Account and settings.
- Select the Advanced tab.
- In the Accounting section, review the First month of financial year field. To change the date, select Edit ✎.
- Select the required month from the dropdown and select Save.
Use this info as a guide to create your budget.
Step 2: Get your budget data
You can base your budget on data either from the current financial year or from the previous year's amounts. If you plan to use historical data, run a Profit and Loss Detail report to make sure transactions and accounts look correct.
By default, the report shows transactions created during the current year to date. Here's how to customise the report to display the previous financial year's amounts instead:
- Go to Business overview and select Reports (Take me there).
- Find and open the Profit and Loss Detail report.
- Select Last Year if January is the first month of your financial year from the Report period dropdown to use the previous year's data. To use data from the current financial year, select This Year-to-date if January is the first month of your financial year.
- Select Run report.
Use this info as a guide to create your budget.
Step 3: Create your budget
To add your first budget:
- Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
- Select Add budget.
- Enter the Budget Name and review the Financial Year, Interval, Pre-fill data and Subdivide by dropdowns.
- Select Next.
- Enter your budget amounts and select Save or Save and close.
If you don't want to start a brand new 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.
- Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
- Find your budget on the list.
- Select the Action ▼ dropdown and then Run Budget Overview report or Run Budgets vs. Actuals report.
The Budget Overview report summarises budgets by account. The Budgets vs. Actuals report summarises accounts alongside your actual account totals. It also shows how much you're under or over budget.
You can now edit your budget and select save.
Edit, copy, or delete budgets
If you need to edit a budget, make your changes in QuickBooks:
- Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
- Find your budget on the list.
- In the Action column, select Edit.
- Edit each account one month at a time.
- 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.
- 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 using last year's data:
- Select Settings ⚙️ and then Budgeting.
- Find the budget you want to copy.
- In the Action column, select the Edit dropdown and then select Copy.
- On the Copy Budget screen, enter the new budget name and financial year.
- Select Create Budget.
- Update the budget amounts as necessary.
- Select Save or Save and close.
This saves the copy as a separate budget.
Delete a budget
If you decide to delete a budget, be careful. You can't recover deleted budgets:
- Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
- Find your budget on the list.
- In the Action column, select the Edit dropdown, then select Delete.
