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Budgets

Budgets let you set income and expense targets for your accounts over a financial year, then compare those targets against what actually happened.

Available on the Premium plan and above. You also need to turn budgeting on for your business — see Enabling Budgets below.

Enabling Budgets​

  1. Go to Settings > Business Setup > Budgets Module.
  2. Turn on Enable Budgets.

Once enabled, the Budgets menu item becomes available under Other Transactions.

Setting Budget Targets​

  1. Go to Budgets.
  2. Choose the Financial Year you're budgeting for.
  3. Choose the Basis — Monthly (a target for each month of the year) or Annual (a single yearly target).
  4. Use the account-type buttons (Income, Expense, Assets, Liabilities) to bring the relevant accounts into the budget grid. Toggling a type off removes its accounts from the grid.
  5. Use the Search accounts… box to quickly find a specific account in a long list.
  6. Enter a target amount for each account, in each month (or as a single annual figure). Use Tab and Enter to move between cells quickly.
  7. For a monthly budget, click the distribute icon next to a row to split that row's total evenly across all twelve months.
  8. Click Save Draft to save your work without finalizing it, or Save & Activate to make it your active budget right away. An active budget can still be edited and saved again.

The grid automatically totals each account section, and shows a Net Profit row (Income minus Expense) for each period.

Budget Status​

StatusMeaning
DraftBeing worked on; not yet finalized.
ActiveThe current working budget, used for the Budget vs Actual report.
ArchivedLocked — read-only, no further edits.

Comparing Budget vs Actual​

  1. From the Budgets page, click View Budget/Actual Report (available once you have a saved budget), or go to Reports and open Budget vs Actual directly.
  2. Select the Budget you want to review.
  3. Choose the view:
    • Summary — one row per account with total Budgeted, Actual, Variance, and % of Budget.
    • Monthly Columns — the same accounts broken out by month, with budget and actual side by side.
  4. Turn on Hide zero-balance accounts to shorten the report to accounts that actually have activity.
  5. Click Run Report.

Each account row is a link to that account's transactions, so you can jump straight from a variance to the entries behind it. Amounts shown in green are favorable (income above budget, or expense below budget); amounts in red are unfavorable.