Budget fiscal year selection

Hello, AppleLa2. 

In QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, you can create budgets based on your accounting data. Once your budgets are in QuickBooks, you can review and adjust everything. Then run financial reports to compare your actual sales and expenses with your budget.  

Step 1: Review your business' fiscal year

Make sure the beginning of your fiscal year is set 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.
4. In the Accounting section, review the First month of the fiscal year field. To change the date, select Edit.

Step 2: Get your budget data

If you already have your budget data, you can skip this step. If you don't have any data yet, use your QuickBooks data to get started:

1. Go to the Reports.
2. Select and open the Profit and Loss Detail report.
3. From the Report Period ▼ dropdown, select a timeframe. If you want to use last year's data, select Last year.
4. Make sure the beginning and end of the year match your fiscal year. If you want to use data from your current fiscal year, select This Year-to-date.
5. Select Run report.

Use this info as a guide to create your budget.

Step 3: Download a budget template

Download a budget .csv template from QuickBooks. Use it to create your budget so all of your data is compatible. You can have up to five budget templates:

1. Go to Settings and select Budgeting.
2. Select Import budget.
3. Select the Sample.csv link to download the template. Save it somewhere you can easily find it, like your Downloads folder.

Step 4: Create your budget

Open the .csv budget template in Excel or Google Sheets. QuickBooks uses your chart of accounts and fiscal year months to format the template format.

Enter your budget for each account for each month. Important: Don't add more columns or rows. If you need more accounts to appear, add them to your chart of accounts before you download the template.

Step 5: Upload your template

When you're done, import your budget back into QuickBooks:

1. Go to Settings and select Budgeting.
2. Select Import budget.
3. Tap Browse and then select the template.

Now your budget is in QuickBooks. Do a quick review.

1. Give the budget a name.
2. Review the cells. Make sure the correct amounts are in each account. If you need to make edits, select a field and make changes.
3. When you're ready, select Save to save your budget.

I'm also adding these articles for reference in case you need tips and related articles in the future:

• Self Help
• Confirm the first month of your fiscal year 

Please let me know if you have further questions or concerns. You can reach out to the Community at any time. Take care and have a fantastic day ahead! 

Thank you for your response. I just found out that we have not closed out our FY 19-20 yet, we are in the middle of auditing that fiscal year. In QBO settings under Advanced, it says our books were closed for 06/30/2019; since that's the case, do you think this affects my budget upload for FY 21-22 because 2020 is not closed yet?? What can I do to work around this? I don't want to have to manually enter all of my budgets if I can do an easy upload.

It's nice hearing back from you, AppleLa2.

As of the moment, the option to select a fiscal year when importing your budget is unavailable. You can select the Fiscal Year when you manually create a budget.

The imported or created budget will not be affected although your books for 2020 is not yet closed. The only data that will change are those on your reports since it changes upon closing the previous year. You can close the previous year after reconciling the accounts and then upload the budget. 

Feel free to check out these articles for more details in handling your books and budgets: 

• QuickBooks year-end guide
• Create and import budgets into QuickBooks Online

I'll be around the corner if you have other questions. Take care and have a great day!

So there is no way to import a budget into the new fiscal year?  I have the prior year closed but when I try to import the budget it says 2021-2022.  I do not have time to enter this budget in by hand as I have already spent 3 hours getting it into the import csv template.

I would really appreciate some instruction on this as there is no point in uploading a budget if I can't put it in the correct year.

Thanks for joining the thread, @TNBookkeeper. I'd be glad to share some steps on how we can get this feature included in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

Since the option to import budget in QBO is currently, unavailable. I'd recommend sending feedback to our product developers for this feature, to help improve your experience. Here's how:

1. Go to the Gear icon.
2. Choose Feedback.
3. Enter your product suggestions.

Then, click Next to submit feedback.

Your opinions and feedback with us will be highly appreciated.

You can visit this website to track the status of your submitted feedback:  QuickBooks Online Feature Requests.

I've also added this article for information on how the budget works in QBO: Create and import budgets into QuickBooks Online.

Furthermore, you can refer to this article if you want to manage the budget by class in the future: Set budget targets for each class.

Ping me a reply if you have any other QuickBooks-related concerns. I'll be happy to assist you. Take care!

I just came across this myself. When importing a budget there is no way to select the year for that budget. However, I found a work around. 

After importing, copy it to a new budget by selecting "Copy" under "Action" on the right hand side of the list of budgets. You will be asked what budget year the new budget is for so you can set it to whatever you like. Viola.

Thank you dgayton!  You just saved me a ton of work!