Create budgets

Many businesses use budgets to help plan their finances. Look back at your assets and liabilities, then create a budget for the coming year, month, or quarter. 

With all your financial data in your company, you can create both profit and loss or balance sheet budgets you need. This gives you an overview to help compare your actual income and expenses with your budget.

Note: You can create a budget at any time, but it’s best to start at the beginning of the fiscal year.

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Prerequisites

• Sign in with an account that can access budgets, such as an admin or standard all access user. 
• Make sure each account you want to include in your budget is listed in the chart of accounts.
• Make sure the beginning of your fiscal year is correct in the Advanced section of your Account and settings (Take me there).

You can either create a new budget or import one you track outside QuickBooks.

Step 1: Create or import a new budget

You can either create a new budget or import one you track outside QuickBooks.

Create a new budget

Follow this link to complete the steps in product

1. Select Create new or Create budget.
2. Select either Profit and loss, or Balance sheet.
3. Select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
4. For a Profit and loss budget, select either Consolidated budget or Subdivided budget. For a Balance sheet budget, select Yearly, Quarterly, or Monthly.
5. For a subdivided budget, select what you want to subdivide by, like Location or Class.
6. Select Next.

Import a budget

If you track your project budget outside QuickBooks, you can use our AI-powered import to track it inside your QuickBooks company. That way, any mismatches or duplicates can be addressed when mapping the spreadsheet to QuickBooks.

Note: You can only import a profit and loss budget.

1. Select Import budget.
2. Select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
3. For a Profit and loss budget, select either Consolidated budget or Subdivided budget. 
4. For a subdivided budget, select what you want to subdivide by, like Location or Class.
5. Select Next.
6. Upload the properly formatted Excel file and select Next.
7. When the budget is finished importing, select View budget.

Step 2: Review the created budget

Once the budget is created, review it and make any necessary changes.

1. Select Edit ✎ and name your budget.
2. If you want to add either past actual or past budget data as a reference, turn on Compare reference data. Then select the reference data you want to compare.
3. To pre-fill your budget with reference data, check the box next to each account you want to include. Then from the Batch actions dropdown, select Copy reference data.
   Tip: To remove the reference data, select Clear reference data instead.
4. Enter your budget for each account. Switch between Yearly,  Quarterly, or Monthly views as needed.
5. Select Save or Save and close.

Note: You can also import a budget from an Excel spreadsheet using Spreadsheet Sync.

Next steps

Once you’ve created a budget, you can copy it, run a report with it, edit it, or delete it.

Follow this link to complete the steps in product

Related links

• Add and manage users
• User roles and access rights
• Add an account to your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online
• Create and edit budgets in Spreadsheet Sync
• Get started with Spreadsheet Sync.
• Use collaborative budget planning