Create a project budget

 Let me help you how to create a budget, Ludus Magnus.

QuickBooks Online Budgeting feature uses the expense and income. To create a Project budget, you have the option to subdivide the budget per project.

Here's how:

1. In the upper right corner, click the Gear icon.
2. Under Tools, choose Budgeting.
3. Select the Add budget button.
4. In the Name field, enter a budget name.
5. From the Fiscal Year drop-down, select the fiscal year for the budget.
6. Use the options on the Interval drop-down menu to specify whether the budget is Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly basis.
7. From the Subdivide by drop-down, select Customer then choose the project. 
8. Select Next.

9. Enter the amount per account, then click Save and close.

You can learn more about managing budgets here: Create and import budgets into QuickBooks Online.

If you have other questions, you can always drop by the Community. We'll be here.

@Adrian_A

Please Learn from this input.

@Ludus Magnus

The function is Estimate. That is "project baseline" instead of Financial Budget.

Here's why:

Budgets are Fiscal Year based, and Estimates stand for the entire lifecycle of the project, customer, etc. And you get to list Products and Services, Noninventory items, and use Quantity on the Estimate.

I created a budget within a customer and project.  How do I run a profit and loss showing my actual to budget?

Good day, @peppersprout!

Thank you for joining this thread. I can help you run and customize the Profit and Loss report to show your Actual vs. Budget.

1. Click Reports.
2. On the search field, enter Budget vs. Actuals.
3. Go to the Budget section, select the appropriate budget.
4. Update the date period.
5. Click Run report to refresh the information.

That steps should help you get the report you need, peppersprout. For more insights about customizing reports, please refer to this article: Report Customization Setting.

If you have follow-up questions about reports. just leave a comment below. I'm still here to help you further. Have a wonderful day!

Hello @drefl,

Currently, there’s no option to create a budget for your projects. But I have a workaround you can consider.

In QuickBooks, the budget feature is closely related to all the accounts in your Chart of Accounts. Transactions involving these accounts affect the amount on your budget.

In the meantime, you can create a budget and subdivide it by project. This way, you can pull up and customize the Budget vs. Actuals report and know the amounts for your projects. Note that creating this budget doesn’t show in your Projects tab.

Here’s how you can create the budget:

1. Click on the Gear icon.
2. Choose Budgeting.
3. Click on Add budget.
4. In the Name field, enter the budget name.
5. Select the Fiscal Year and Interval of the budget.
6. From the Subdivide by drop-down, choose Customer.
7. Select the project from the Add subdivided budget for drop-down.
8. Click on Next.
9. Enter the budget for your project in the corresponding accounts.
10. Click on Save.

Then, you can pull up and customize your Budget vs. Actuals report to see the amounts of the budget. You can follow these steps:

1. Click on Reports from the left panel.
2. Look for Budget vs. Actuals on the search bar.
3. Click on Customize.
4. Click on the Filter section.
5. Tick on Customer.
6. Select the project name from the drop-down.
7. Click on Run Report.

Also, I see how this can be very beneficial to your business. Don’t worry, I’ll let our engineers know if your suggestion and its benefit towards the success of your business.

We also have our QBO Self-Help page if you want to learn some processes in QuickBooks.

Feel free to let me know if you need help with anything else. I’ll only be a post away.

I completely agree with you on this.  We need the ability to budget with projects and not for the overall company in the fiscal year. I have a client who needs to track and pull p&L's for a project but this project does not land on his fiscal year.  

Hello there, @cynthiawing.

It's nice to see here in the Community. Let me provide some information about the budget for projects in QuickBooks.

Currently, the ability to create a budget for projects isn't available. In the meantime, the budget feature is closely related to all the accounts in your Chart of Accounts. Also, you can refer to the steps provided by my colleague above.

On the other hand, we aim to provide support and deliver customer satisfaction in any way possible. Your willingness to help us improve our service is highly appreciated. You can send us your suggestions through our feedback option.

Here's how:

1. Click on the Gear icon.
2. Click Feedback.
3. Type in your feedback or feature request.
4. Click Send Message.

Your willingness to help us improve our service is highly appreciated.

If there's anything I can do to make your day better, please let me know. I'm always here to help.
 

I agree we definitely need more budgeting functionality - I could really use a way to budget for a particular project by division, as we have national projects that include many local "mini budgets" within them. Right now there doesn't seem to be any way to get this information into QB. I could make either a project budget that doesn't break out divisions, or make separate division budgets that don't relate to the project.

I am also in need of the ability to set budgets per project. This would allow us to keep track of budget consumption per project in real time. This would be a killer feature for agencies.

I could not agree with this comment more.  Budgeting at the project level is a must.  Without it, we are forced to do a tremendous amount of manual work each week for our client status reports.  - We let them know each week where we are at with regards to hours worked and decline balance of funds available to complete project (we operating with consulting style).  When will quickbooks add this VERY much needed feature?????

I see that you saying to select Customer in the Filter area, but it's not available in the Quickbooks Online that I am using.  This would be a way to get the actual vs budget on a high level if they would add that filter to this report.

Welcome to the thread, wiemergal.

I'm here to lend a hand about your budget concern. 

The Customer option filter in the Budget vs Actuals report in QuickBooks Online (QBO) will show up depends on how you create the budget.

If you didn't select Customer in the Subdivide by drop-down menu when creating a budget, then, that is the reason why it isn't showing on the filters when you try to customize the Budget vs Actuals report. 

For more information about the Budget feature in QBO, see this article: Create and import budgets into QuickBooks Online.

For additional reference, you may find below links helpful:

• Customize reports in QuickBooks Online
• Common custom reports in QuickBooks Online

Get back to me on this thread and leave a comment if you have further questions. I'd be glad to answer it for you. Have a nice day.

Your comment reflects the continued lack of understanding that QBO has in what business owners need to track project budget. Please consult with business owners to help improve the system in this area as it is currently totally lacking.  A business does not need to budget against its Chart of Account (which is what QBO is currently insanely think is budget process), whether by customer or project (as you suggest). You are not understanding  that the issue is the "budgeting by Chart of Accounts accounts" that QBO wrongly think is budgeting.  A COMPANY NEEEDS TO BE ABLE BUDGET AT THE PROJECT LEVEL FOR "EACH EMPLOYEE" ASSIGNED TO A PROJECT "BY HOURS WORKED BY EACH EMPLOYEE" AND/OR "BY EMPLOYEE LABOR COST BY EACH EMPLOYEE" ON A WEEKLY, MONTHLY AND OTHER PERIOD LEVEL.

Hello there, drefl,

Being able to track a project budget in QuickBooks Online is a good idea for business owners like you.

The Project feature in QiuckBooks can track project income, expenses, and profitability. While the Budget one will track your actual sales and expenses.

Let me make it up to you by making sure your request is forwarded to our Product Engineers. Feedback is the easiest way for our engineers to know what aspects of the program our users want to be added.

That being said, you can submit a product suggestion within your QuickBooks Online company file. Let me show you how:

1. Click the Gear icon at the top, then Feedback.
2. Enter your comments or product suggestions then select Next.
3. You'll be provided a list of suggested Help articles related to your comment. You can read through them or select Skip and send message.
4. From the drop-down, choose the appropriate category, then select Send message.

You can track feature requests through the QuickBooks Online Feature Requests website.

To keep you updated with what's new, I recommend checking out QuickBooks Blog. All latest product updates and improvements are posted on this page.

Stay in touch with me if you need anything else. I'll be around here in the Community to help you.

so to clarify..... it will not take the estimate created for the project and populate the budget?

I need to take my estimate and manually add to my budget all the accounts it will post to once I start progress invoicing, correct?

Hello @njhinkson1,

Yes, there isn't yet an integrated way to create a budget to be assigned with your project. You're on the right track in creating an estimate and manually posting it to your budget.

Learn more about how the project works with this article: Learn how to use Projects to track project income, expenses, and profitability.

Additionally, I've also included this helpful article for the different methods you can start using in accepting payments for your project: Learn how to receive and categorize invoice payments.

If you have any other questions, please let me know by leaving any comments below. Stay safe!

As an accountant, I want QBO to do accounting, bookkeeping and tax filing.

I think that the solution for: Estimate, Budget and Project monitoring is to link an APP to quickbooks.

Verifi, BQE Core, WORKets are a few of the recommended APPS that link to quickbooks.

If anyone has experience with APP's for project management and how it links to QBO please share your experience.

Good morning, @Bates-G! Hope you had a great weekend. :)

Others may have specific recommendations, so I'll leave the floor open, but if you haven't checked it out already, our apps page has a lot of great options for additional functionality in QuickBooks: quickbooks.intuit.com/app.

Feel free to browse that site and look at your different choices!

There are dozens if not hundreds. A lower cost option for a full PSA I recently evauated is BigTime. It tracks people-resources and expenses across projects well and seems to have a good connector to Quickbooks. I have not personally used it. 

It is very simple but you can't beat Harvest for tracking time and expenses across projects. It has a very simple interface to connect to quickbooks, you generate invoices in Harvest based on time 

Let's be clear: no general ledger software does an amazing job of project accounting, and of them all, Quickbooks is probably the worst of them. Sorry guys but it's true. 

For a small accounting practice the Xero practice manager system isn't bad but then... you'd be on Xero :)

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@qbteachmt wrote:

@Adrian_A

Please Learn from this input.

 

@Ludus Magnus

 

The function is Estimate. That is "project baseline" instead of Financial Budget.

 

Here's why:

 

Budgets are Fiscal Year based, and Estimates stand for the entire lifecycle of the project, customer, etc. And you get to list Products and Services, Noninventory items, and use Quantity on the Estimate.

 

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How can I do "Estimate" since the adding a Budget is fiscal year only?

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.

I would love to know how you created a budget in customer and project?