Create or import budgets into QuickBooks Online

Learn how to create or import budgets into QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.

Many businesses use budgets to help plan their finances. This is done by looking back at the income and expenses or assets, liabilities, and equity of the business, then creating a budget for the coming year, month, or quarter. 

With all your financial data in QuickBooks, you can create both profit and loss or balance sheet budgets you need for your company. Then, you can review and edit your budget and run reports to compare your actual income and expenses with your budget.

Create a budget

To create a new budget, you’ll need to sign in as an admin or as a user with the correct permission to access budgets. Now, admins can also add custom roles with permissions to access only budgets. Find out more here.

Note: Only QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced subscriptions have access to the budget feature. If you have a different subscription and want to use budgets, learn how to upgrade your subscription to Plus or Advanced.

Step 1: Review the fiscal year for your business

Make sure the beginning of your fiscal year is correct in QuickBooks. You can create a budget any time, but it helps if you start at the beginning of the fiscal year.

1. Sign in to QuickBooks Online.
2. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Account and settings.
3. Select the Advanced tab.
4. In the Accounting section, review the First month of fiscal year field. If it’s incorrect, select Edit ✎.
5. Select the required month from the ▼ dropdown and select Save.
6. Select Done.

Step 2: Get your budget data

If you already have the data you want to use for your budget, you can skip this step. If not, you can base your budget on data from either the current fiscal year or the previous year. 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 customize the report to display the previous fiscal year's amounts instead:

Use this info as a guide to create your budget.

Step 3: Create your budget

To create a budget, you can either use your past financial data or previous budgets in QuickBooks. If this is your first budget, start here. We'll show you how to copy a budget after you’ve added your first budget.

You can also create a budget by importing a .csv file (see below), or if you are using QuickBooks Online Advanced, from excel using Spreadsheet Sync.

Note: QuickBooks Online creates the budget accounts list directly from your chart of accounts. If you need more accounts in your budget, add them to your chart of accounts before you create the budget.

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
2. Select Create new.
   Note: Select Create a budget, if you are adding for the first time.
3. Select Budget type.
   • If you select Profit and loss:
     1. From the Period dropdown ▼, select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
     2. Select the Budget format: Consolidated budget or Subdivided budget.
        • For subdivided budget, select what you want to subdivide by, from Subdivide by and Add subdivided budget for dropodowns ▼.
   • If you select Balance sheet:
     1. From the Period dropdown ▼, select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
     2. From the Default view dropdown ▼, select how you want to add numbers to your budget: Yearly, Quarterly or Monthly.
4. Select Next.
5. You may take the following actions as needed:
   1. To customize the budget title, select the edit icon ✎ next to the automatically generated title. 
   2. If you want to add either past actual or past budget data as a reference, turn the Compare reference data switch on, and select what type of reference data you want to use.
   3. If you want to prefill your budget with the reference data, select the checkbox next to Accounts to select all the rows, or select individual rows. From the Batch actions dropdown ▼, select Copy reference data.
   4. To remove the reference data, select the required rows, then select Clear data from the Batch actions dropdown ▼.
6. Enter your budget for each account for each month. Use the report you saved in Step 2: Get your budget data, if needed.
7. Select Save or Save and close.

Duplicate an existing budget

Instead of starting from scratch, you can duplicate an existing budget. This jumpstarts your new budget by using last year's data. Here’s how to duplicate a budget:

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
2. Find the budget you want to duplicate.
3. From the Actions column, select the ▼ dropdown, then select Duplicate.
4. From the Period dropdown ▼, select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
5. Select Duplicate.

This saves the copy as a new, separate budget.

Edit a budget

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

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
2. Find your budget on the list.
3. From the Actions column, select View/Edit.
   Note: This maybe available under the ▼ dropdown in the Actions column.
4. Edit each account one month at a time.
5. To change the time period from monthly to quarterly or yearly, switch between Yearly/Quarterly/Monthly views.
6. Select Save or Save and close.

Delete a budget

If you decide to delete a budget, be careful. You can't recover deleted budgets.

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
2. Find your budget on the list.
3. From the Actions column, select the ▼ dropdown, then select Delete.
4. Select Yes to confirm.

Run budget reports

You can run special profit and loss 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. From the Actions column, select the ▼ dropdown, then select Run Budgets vs. Actuals report or Run Budget Overview report.
4. If you want to export a budget as pdf/excel, export them via reports.

The Budget Overview report summarizes budgets by account.

The Budgets vs. Actuals report summarizes accounts alongside your actual account totals. It also shows how much you're under or over budget.

For more info, learn how to create budgets in Spreadsheet Sync.