- Choose the Company → Planning & Budgeting →Set Up Budgets command.
QuickBooks displays the Set Up Budgets window — the same one shown here. You use this window to record the amount that you expect for each revenue and expense for each month during the year in which you’re budgeting.
The Set Up Budgets window. - Select a budget, or create a new one. Select the budget you want to work with from the Budget drop-down list at the top of the window. To create a new budget (you can have as many budgets as you want), click the Create New Budget button. For help with creating a new budget, see the preceding section.
- (Optional) Choose a customer. You typically budget by account. If you want to budget in finer detail by also estimating amounts for customers, jobs, or classes, you can use the Current Customer:Job drop-down list to identify specific customers from whom you expect revenue or for whom you expend costs. Note: The Customer:Job drop-down list box doesn’t appear unless, when you created the budget you’re now working with, you indicated that you wanted to budget by customer.
- Record the budgeted amounts for each month of the fiscal year.
Type the amounts you want to budget for each account in the appropriate month columns. Again, remember that revenue and expense accounts are budgeted as the amount expected for the month. Asset, liability, and owner’s equity amounts are budgeted as the ending account balance expected for the month.
To copy the budgeted amount for one month into the text boxes for the succeeding months, click the Copy Across button.
- (Optional) Adjust row amounts.
If you find that the yearly total for an account isn’t what you want it to be, you can go back and change the amounts for each month so that they add up to the correct total, or you can click the Adjust Row Amounts button. Clicking this button displays the Adjust Row Amounts dialog box, shown here. Use the Start At drop-down list to select the month you want to start with (either the first month or the currently selected month). Then choose whether you want to increase or decrease the amounts budgeted, and by how much (by entering either a dollar amount or a percentage). Click OK when you finish; QuickBooks closes the dialog box.
The Adjust Row Amounts dialog box. - Repeat as necessary. Repeat Steps 3 through 5 for each of the accounts for which you want to record budgeted amounts.
