Use collaborative budget planning

Learn how to collaborate with team members during budget creation in Intuit Enterprise Suite budget collaboration helps you create budgets effectively with these 3 key functions:

1. Budget Tasks: Break down the budgeting process into smaller tasks that can be done independently or in the order you set. Assign these tasks to yourself or to other members of your team and also track their status. Admins can monitor all budget tasks in one place.
2. Budget Comments: Create a budget and save notes or feedback as comments. You can add them to individual cells or rows within a budget. Users with view permissions to budgets can view comments and reply to them.
3. Budget Approvals: Set up approval workflow for budgets by adding your stakeholders. You or members of your team can submit a budget for approval and track the status of the budget in the budget center.

Who can collaborate on a budget?

To collaborate on budgets, you must be an admin or a user with permission to access budgets. Admins can create custom roles with permission to access budgets. 

Here’s how you can use budget collaboration:

Step 1: Create and save a budget

1. Sign in to your Intuit Enterprise Suite account.
2. Select Financial Planning, then Budgets (Take me there).
3. Select Create budget.
4. Select your setup options such as budget type, format, and period.
5. Select Next.
6. Add or change budget data as needed, then select Save or Save and close.

Step 2: Create tasks

Once you have a budget saved and want to collaborate on the budget, follow these steps:

1. Select Financial Planning, then Budgets (Take me there).
2. Find your budget on the list.
3. In the Actions ▼ dropdown, select View/Edit.
4. In the budget edit view, select the task  icon.
5. Select +Add task.
6. Enter the task name and set the due date.
7. In the Assign to dropdown, select the task owner.
8. In the Notes field, enter a description to provide additional details.
9. To upload a file, select Upload document. Or, choose Select document to attach a file that's already in QuickBooks.
10. When done, select Save.

The assignee will get a notification indicating there’s a task assigned to them. Selecting the task will take them to the budget.

Step 3: Monitor status of tasks and bring them to closure

Once you’ve created budget tasks, you can track their status by opening the budget. You’ll also see all the budget related tasks in the list.

1. In the budget edit view, select the task  icon.
2. Select the Completed tab to see all of the finished tasks.
3. You can also mark any remaining tasks as Completed from this view.

Step 4: Submit the Budget for Approval 

You can send your budgets for approval after setting up the approval workflow. Only users with admin permissions can set up budget approval workflows. But, all users with edit permissions to budgets can request approval.

Here’s how you can set up a budget and submit it for approval.

1. Select the Workflows menu. Or select Settings ⚙ and then Manage Workflows.
2. Select the Templates tab.
3. Select Approval | Budget to land on the budget approval template. 
4. Make changes to the template if needed, by setting up conditions. Learn more on how to create custom workflows.
5. Add approvers to the template.
6. Select Save and turn on to turn on approval for budgets.
7. Go to the budget you want to request approval for and select Save.
8. Select Submit for approval to submit the budget for approval.

Note: Any user with edit permissions to budgets can request approval on the finalized budget.

Export your budget

Once all the tasks are completed and the budget is final, you can export it.

1. Open the budget that you want to export.
2. Select the Export/Print ▼ dropdown.
3. Select Export to Excel, or Print/Save as PDF.