Creating a Budget in QuickBooks Step-by-Step

Budgeting is one of the most effective strategies to keep track of your company’s expenses. QuickBooks has the feature where you can easily create a budget for your business. While defining the specifics of your budget might take some time. But QuickBooks makes your task easy and hassle-free.

Budgeting always plays an important role in a successful business, spending money in a well-planned way is key to success.

In this article, we will discuss how you can easily prepare your budget, how it is helpful for you, and what steps you have to follow while creating a budget in QuickBooks.

What is budgeting

A budget is a financial document or planning which ensures that in which manner or where and how much you have to spend your money. The most visible components are a revenue projection (how much you expect to sell) and an expenditure estimate (how much you expect to spend) (how much you anticipate spending).

Budgeting is not predicting, as many people believe. True, budgeting entails some predicting, especially in the field of sales budgeting. However, rather than just forecasting future outcomes, the process involves detailed analysis and preparation.

Any well-run company can’t avoid predicting or estimating future circumstances and trends to formulate future policies and decisions. Budgeting is concerned with scheduled occurrences, whereas forecasting is concerned with likely events. Forecasting should come before budgeting, although it may also be used for other purposes.

Advantages of creating Budget in QuickBooks

1. Keep an eye on your money

A budget is a smart approach to manage your money deliberately. Budgeting helps you to live with considerably less stress and anxiety about those unexpected costs that arise. It makes you stop your unnecessary spending habits.

2. Track your finances

Another benefit of budgeting your money is that it will assist you to avoid paying for needless fees, services, and items that will detract from your financial goals. If you have a fixed income, budgeting will help you make ends meet considerably more easily and stress-free each month.

3. Organized your spending

It allows you to track and organize your money wisely.it helps you to see whether you are spending your money in the right direction or not.

4. Long term goal

What are your financial objectives over the long term? You’ll be able to see how to achieve those objectives if you make a budget. A reasonable budget is the building block. In reality, if you keep track of your spending and create a solid budget, you’ll be able to plan out a path to your desired destination.

2. Steps to create a budget in QuickBooks

QuickBooks is very easy to operate the software. You can easily create a budget in QuickBooks just by following these simple steps.

1. Learn to budget

•  Go to the Gear icon and select Company
• Next, select on Planning and budgeting
• Now, click on Set up Budget, a drop-down list appears. 
• From that drop-down list, choose to Create a New Budget     

2. Create a New Budget

     A new window of Create a new budget appears.

• Choose the year, for which you want to create a budget
• Click on Budget Type
• After choosing the budget type, click Next
• Enter details of a customer
• Now the select type of Budget
• Choose from scratch, if you want to make it from starting
• Or choose from the previous year, if you resume from the previous year
• Click on Finish and your budget is ready

3. Review your budget

•  Go to the Gear icon
• Select Report and choose budget and forecast
• Click on Set up Budget
• The following report will appear

1. Overview of budget

The financial statement format of your budget is shown in this report. To assist you in reaching your objectives, you may quickly verify those quantities were entered correctly and are right. Your expected net income is shown in this report. Even if everything is recorded accurately and following your goals, the net income for the year may indicate a loss. So, you can recalculate and amend it later.

2. Profit and loss budget

It informs you how much you’ve gone over or under budget, as well as by what %. This report tells you where you’re on track to accomplish your goals and where you might need to make adjustments, to stay on track to meet your year’s budget. This report is also available in graph format.

3. Performance of your company

It will give you a glimpse of the performance of your company by reporting on profit and loss.

Summary

Software like QuickBooks has brought a revolution in the world of accounting. It makes your hours work into minutes. as budgeting requires much patience and planning, it becomes your helping hand. Sometimes while preparing a budget, we lack where to spend how much? QuickBooks can overview the performance of your company and prepare the budget according to your company’s performance.