Your confusion ends here, @yjrose35.

Allow me to provide additional information on your concern and help you from there.

In QuickBooks Online (QBO), you can enter estimates anytime and associate them with a project. Thus, it doesn't affect your budget. Creating budgets only allows you to compare against the actual sales and expenses made in QuickBooks for a fiscal year.

I'm adding this article to learn more about budgets: Create and import budgets into QuickBooks Online.

You might also want to set budget targets for each class. This article will help you accomplish it: Set budget targets for each class.

Please let me know if you need clarification about budgets. I'll be standing by for your response, @yjrose35.