Create budgets

Learn how to add budgets into QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.

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.

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To watch more how-to videos, visit our video section.

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. Admins can also add custom roles with permissions to access only budgets. Here’s how.

Step 1: Review the fiscal year for your business

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

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Account and settings.
2. Select the Advanced tab.
3. In the Accounting section, review the First month of the fiscal year field. If it's incorrect, select Edit ✎.
4. Select the required month from the dropdown and select Save.

Step 2: Create your budget

To create a budget, you can either use your past financial data or previous budget. If this is your first budget, start here. You also have an option to copy a budget after you’ve added your first budget.

You can also create a budget by importing an excel file, or from excel using Spreadsheet Sync.

Note: 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 ⚙ then select Budgeting.
2. Select Create new. 

Create Profit and loss budget

1. Go to Settings ⚙ then select Budgeting.
2. Select Create new.
3. Select the Budget type: Profit and loss. 
4. Select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
5. Select the Budget format: Consolidated budget or Subdivided budget. 
   • For subdivided budget, select what you want to subdivide by, like location or class.

Create Balance sheet budget

1. Go to Settings ⚙ then select Budgeting.
2. Select Create new.
3. Select Budget type: Balance sheet.
4. Select the fiscal year you're creating the budget for.
5. Select how you want to add numbers to your budget: Yearly, Quarterly or Monthly.
6. Select Next.

Create a custom budget

Customize your budget to suit your business needs.

1. Go to Settings ⚙ then select Budgeting.
2. Select the existing budget you want to customize.
3. To customize the budget title, select Edit ✎ next to the automatically generated title. 
4. If you want to add either past actual or past budget data as a reference, turn the Compare reference data toggle on and select what type of reference data you want to use.
5. If you want to prefill your budget with the reference data, select the check box next to Accounts to select all the rows, or select individual rows. In Batch actions select Copy reference data. 
   Tip: To remove the reference data, select the same rows, then select Clear reference data.
6. Now, enter your budget for each account. You can switch between Yearly/Quarterly/Monthly views in the settings icon on the top right depending on the type of budget you need.
7. Select Save or Save and close.

Edit a budget

If you need to edit a budget:

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
2. Find your budget on the list.
3. In the Options column, select View/Edit.
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. In the Options column, select the Options ▼ dropdown, then select Delete.

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. In the Options column, select the ▼ dropdown, then select Run Budget Overview report or Run Budgets vs. Actuals report.
4. If you want to export a budget as pdf/excel, export them via reports.

Tip: 

• The Budget Overview report summarizes budgets by account.
• The Budgets vs. Actuals report provides a comparison between accounts and your actual account totals. It shows how much you're under or over budget.
• Use Spreadsheet Sync to securely sync your budget between QuickBooks and a spreadsheet. Consider upgrading to QuickBooks Online Advanced. With Advanced, you can edit budget numbers and quickly sync them back to QuickBooks.

Find out how you can create and manage forecasts in QuickBooks Online Advanced.