What a budget is
A budget holds an amount for each income and expense account, for each month of one financial year. A year can have several budgets — a first draft, the version after the board meeting — and one of them is the approved budget. A budget never posts anything: it is a plan beside the books, not part of them.
Starting a budget
- Open Reports › Budgets and press New budget.
- Choose the Financial year. Next year can be budgeted before it is opened for posting.
- Give it a Name, or leave the suggested one.
- Under Start from, choose Last year's actual figures (each month from the same month of the year before), A copy of another budget, or A blank budget.
- With last year's figures you may choose a Project or Branch, to start from that one's figures only; every row then carries it.
- Under Change by (%), type 10 to add 10% to every figure, or -5 to take 5% off. Press Start the budget.
Figures taken from last year, or moved by a percentage, are rounded to whole units: a budget is an estimate. A copy at 0% is exact.
Changing the figures
- Type into the grid: one row per account (and, if you add them, per project or branch), one column per month. Income and expenses are both entered as positive figures, as the Profit and Loss shows them.
- To share a yearly figure evenly over the months, press the wand beside the row (Spread a yearly figure), type the year's figure and press Spread it.
- To add a row, choose the Account (and a Project or Branch if the row is for one) under Add a row and press Add row. The bin removes a row.
- Press Save. Nothing is kept until then; Discard changes goes back to what was saved.
The grid's foot shows Income, Expenses and Net profit for each month and the year.
Working in Excel
- Press Download Excel. The file has a row per account with its code, its project and branch, and a column per month.
- Change the figures in Excel. Rows can be added: type the account code, and the project or branch by name or code.
- Back on the budget, press Read a file and choose the file. The grid fills from it, and still waits for Save.
The file is read by its headings, so columns may be moved. If anything in it cannot be read — an unknown account code, a project that does not exist, text where a figure should be — every problem is listed with its row number and nothing changes.
Approving and reopening
- On a draft, press Approve and confirm. It becomes the approved budget for its year and is locked: its figures, name and notes cannot change.
- If another budget of that year was approved, it goes back to being a draft.
- To change an approved budget, press Reopen. It becomes a draft again, and the year has no approved budget until one is approved.
A draft can be deleted (Delete budget); an approved one must be reopened first. The audit trail records starting, saving, approving, reopening and deleting a budget.
Comparing with the books
Press Compare with the books on a budget to open the Profit and Loss for its year to date with the budget beside it, or choose it under Compare with on the Profit and Loss. See Profit and Loss › Against a budget.