You’ve put together a great project, but you’re struggling to get your budget down to a reasonable level. What do you do? This comprehensive guide will show you how to create a better project budget in QuickBooks Desktop. By taking this approach, you’ll be able to manage your projects with greater accuracy and efficiency.
The QuickBooks budget is a feature that allows you to track your company’s expenses and income. This budget works as a way of keeping track of all the money coming in and going out of your company. It helps you see where your business stands financially, allowing you to make decisions about how much money to spend and on what.
However, when companies are making their budgets in it, they may enter incorrect information or change values at a later point. To make the information correct or change the values in it, editing the QuickBooks budget will be suggested. Using the Budgeting option, we will pick the Edit icon to complete this purpose. Those of you who are not familiar with how to edit a budget in QuickBooks can continue reading. We will explain all the steps involved in the method to do so. These methods will also be suitable for QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online.
How to Create a Project Budget in Quickbooks Desktop
A budget is a plan for income and expenditures. It can give you an idea of how your financial situation should play out over a course of time. It can also help you set goals and see why you have met them, exceeded them, or failed to achieve them.
Every business should create a budget so that they can estimate how much money they will have after a given amount of time. Without a budget, you may be in for unpleasant surprises when it comes time to report on your financial performance. With QuickBooks Online, you can create budgets and then run reports to compare how your estimates matched up with your actual sales and expenses.
In this article, we will start by learning how to create a budget. You will see that you need to be subscribed to a certain level and have the right privileges. You’ll then see how you can run various reports on your budgets to see how you are performing compared to your budgeting.
Creating a Budget
To start, you need to have the correct subscription level, which is Advanced or Plus. If you don’t have this subscription level, you can upgrade. To upgrade, click the gear-shaped Settings icon in the Header, then go to Account and Settings under the Your Company heading. Find the Usage tab and scroll to the bottom where you will see an Upgrade Now button.
Step 1: Review last year’s data
Before you can set up a budget or forecast, make sure your fiscal year is set correctly.
- Go to the Company menu and select My Company.
- Select the pencil icon and then Report Information.
- Make sure the first month of your fiscal year is correct.
Then, review last fiscal year’s financial reports.
- Go to the Reports menu and hover over Company & Financial.
- Select Profit & Loss Detail or Balance Sheet Detail depending on what you want to forecast or budget for.
- From the Dates dropdown, select Last Fiscal Year.
- Select Refresh.
- (Optional) You can memorize this report for later use.
Step 2: Set up a budget or forecast
Now you have reports you can use to make a budget or a forecast.
Create a budget
You can create next year’s budget from scratch, or use last year’s Profit and Loss data to start one.
- Go to the Company menu and hover over Planning & Budgeting. Then select Set Up Budgets.
- Select Create New Budget.
- Set the fiscal year for the budget, then choose either Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet. Then select Next. If you select Profit and Loss, you can add additional criteria, such as Jobs or Class tracking.
- If you select Profit and Loss, select either Create budget from scratch or Create budget from the previous year’s actual data.
- Select Finish.
Create a forecast
If you use QuickBooks Desktop Premier, Accountant, or Enterprise, you can also create forecasts to predict future revenue and cash flow. You can create a financial forecast from scratch, or from last year’s data.
- Go to the Company menu and hover over Planning & Budgeting. Then select Set Up Forecast.
- Select Create New Forecast.
- Set the fiscal year for the forecast. You can also specify additional criteria, such as Jobs or Class tracking, but this is optional.
- Select either Create forecast from scratch or Create forecast from the previous year’s actual data.
- Select Finish.
Step 2: Review your budgets and forecasts
Go to the Reports menu and select Budgets and Forecasts.
How to create a project budget in QuickBooks Online
If you’re like most businesses, you only have limited money to spend. Surprisingly, though, too many companies operate without a plan to control spending and balance it against income.
Budgeting is the best way to not only plan for spending, but also to understand your cash flows and grow your company. QuickBooks Online allows businesses to set up multiple budgets at once, allocating funds by year, quarter, month, project, job, class, and more to achieve full control over spending.
In our upcoming webinar, you can learn the ins and out of creating budgets in QuickBooks Online, as well as alternatives for seamless fund allocation. To get a head start on managing your cash flows, you can follow these simple tips for budgeting in QuickBooks Online.
Creating a Budget
Adding a new budget in QuickBooks Online is straightforward. Start by clicking on the gear icon in the top right corner and choose Budgeting. In the menu you’ll see all the budgets you’ve already created, plus an option to Add Budget in green. Click that to create a new budget.
You’ll have to name your budget, and then you have options for designating the time interval for your budget. You can create yearly budgets, or break them down further and plan your spending on quarterly or monthly bases. There’s also the option to create your budget from scratch or base it off last year’s numbers.
Once you’ve created your budget, you can control how you view it in QuickBooks Online. The column timeline can be expanded or collapsed as needed by clicking on the Grid Gear above the chart to the right. You can also toggle back and forth between monthly, quarterly, and annual views, hide rows you don’t need at the moment, and condense the text to see more of your budget on your screen at any given time.
The final step is building out your budget by allocating your expenses and expected income. Every cell of QuickBooks Online functions as its own mini-calculator that can perform simple math for you. Alternatively, some businesses choose to work off past numbers, prefilling data from the prior year into their budget and making adjustments as necessary. You can also easily duplicate values across columns and utilize shortcuts to break annual totals into monthly budgets.
Budgeting By Project or Class
One of the benefits of budgeting in QuickBooks Online is that you’re not limited to just total company spending, but can subdivide your budgets as many times as you want according to customer, project, class, and more.
The Projects Center in QuickBooks Online makes it easy to track income and expenses for individual customer jobs. You have the option of either creating a separate budget for each project, or creating a budget for an individual client and subdividing it for each separate project for that client. Overall budgets can similarly be divided amongst your different customers when you first create them. With these options, you can track the budget for a specific client project from start to finish.
QuickBooks Online also supports budgeting by class. This feature allows you to break down your income and expenses for individual revenue streams and create a budget for each class of financials.
Third-Party Apps for Budgeting
QuickBooks Online isn’t the only option for corporate budgeting. Apps like Divvy allow you to allocate your funds through hassle-free employee credit cards. Divvy allows you to easily establish budgets by project, team, event, or any other category you need in order to best manage your spending.
Divvy helps businesses avoid overspending by providing real-time visibility into expenditures, without having to wait for month-end financial closures. You can also control and edit your budgets on the web or via mobile apps at any time. With Divvy, you can create living budgets that go beyond static spreadsheets.
The key to business success and growth is having control over and visibility into your spending. With the right tools for budgeting, you’ll have confidence that you’re putting your limited funds to proper use.
How To edit in Quickbooks
How should I Edit a Budget in QuickBooks?
Users can edit the budget in the QuickBooks program only when they have located it. It can be located through the option of Budgeting. Once the budget has been found, tap on the dropdown available near it. It will show the Edit option. You can use this particular option to edit the budget. See to it that after all the edits have been made, the changes get saved.
- Run “QuickBooks” to see the “Gear” button.
- Using the button, opt for “Budgeting”.
- Go through the list of your organization’s budgets.
- Select any one budget.
- Towards the right of the budget, a dropdown icon will be seen. Click on this icon.
- From the options displayed, choose “Edit”.
- The needed changes can be made to the budget. In the end, save these changes.
Please Note: While performing step 5, you will see various options along with “Edit”. These options will include “Run Budget Vs. Actual Report”, “Run Budget Overview Report”, “Copy” and “Delete”. You can use these options as per your requirements.
The method given above explains how you can edit a budget in QuickBooks. When more than one budget has to be edited, this method will have to be administered again. You may be unable to edit multiple budgets in one go in this accounting software.
How to Edit a Budget in QuickBooks Desktop?
QuickBooks Desktop is a version of the QB software in which editing the budget is very simple. To start, you can select the Gear-like icon to open Budgeting. This option will help you in finding all the budgets that have been entered by you. To edit one of these, you can make use of the dropdown provided next to the budget. The dropdown will reveal several options. Select the third option, or the option of Edit, to continue.
The following directions will assist you better to know how to edit a budget in QuickBooks Desktop:
- Tap on the “Gear” like button in “QuickBooks Desktop”.
- The button will display “Budgeting”. Select it.
- Every budget of your company will be displayed. Pick one of these budgets.
- Press the dropdown button next to the budget.
- The following options will come up:
- “Copy”
- “Delete”
- “Edit”
- “Run Budget Overview Report”
- “Run Budget Vs. Actual Report”
- Select “Edit”.
- You can now initiate the changes and then save them.
QuickBooks is used for creating multiple budgets. You may want to make changes to more than one budget. Edits to them can be made one by one.
Can You Edit a Budget in QuickBooks Online?
While QBO can be used for creating a budget, it can also be utilized for editing it. To make changes to the budget of your company via QuickBooks Online, you can visit the Settings. Head to the option of Budgeting to view all the budgets that have been entered by you. For every budget, an Edit symbol will be present. Press this symbol and start making the necessary changes. At the end of this method, you will be required to save these changes.
For learning more about how to edit a budget in QuickBooks Online, please go through these directions:
- You need to find “Settings” in “QBO”.
- Now, choose “Budgeting” in “Settings”.
- A list carrying different budgets will open. Choose one of them.
- Click on “Edit”.
To Take Everything into Account,
The option of editing budgets in QuickBooks is of use for several companies. It should be noticed that even when the option to delete a budget is available in the software, editing it can be more useful as well as time-saving. Even when the changes or errors in the budget are very minor, you can quickly edit them. Then you can continue working on the edited budget.
Conclusion
Project budgeting is an important tool for businesses. By using the right tools and following a project budgeting plan, you can ensure that your projects are successful. Additionally, by communicating with your team and estimating the costs and benefits of your projects, you can make informed decisions about future projects.