How to make a budget in QuickBooks

Check your plan first. The Intuit article these steps come from lists QuickBooks Online Plus only, and the companion article on budgeting by class names Plus and Advanced. Simple Start and Essentials aren't listed for either.

Then run through three checks. You need to be signed in as a user with access to budgets, and Intuit gives an admin or a standard all access user as examples. Every account you plan to put figures against has to exist in your chart of accounts already. And the financial year start date should be correct: it's on the Advanced tab of Account and settings.

You can start a budget whenever you like, although Intuit suggests the beginning of the financial year. A budget can cover the profit and loss or the balance sheet, and can be viewed by year, quarter or month. Comparing what actually comes in and goes out against it gives you a picture of how the business is performing.

Planning a budget for each class? Intuit suggests running the Profit and Loss by Class report for your last financial year first and checking its figures, because they make a sensible base for each class's targets. Go to Reports, select Standard reports, search for that report and set the Report period dropdown to Last year if your financial year starts in January, or Last financial year if it doesn't, then select Run report.

1. Go to Reports and select Budgets, which is listed in the menu's planning group.
2. Select Create budget. If this is your first budget, the button reads Create a budget.
3. Choose the budget type, Profit and loss or Balance sheet. Profit and loss is selected unless you change it.
4. From the Period dropdown, choose the financial year the budget is for.
5. Choose a format. A profit and loss budget can be Consolidated or Subdivided; for Subdivided, use the Subdivide by and Subdivide for dropdowns to pick what it's split by, such as a class. A balance sheet budget takes Yearly, Quarterly or Monthly from the Default view dropdown.
6. If you'd like the budget to start with reference figures in it, choose a value from the Pre-fill data dropdown. You can skip this.
7. Select Next.
8. Type the budget figure for each account against each month.
9. Select Save and close.

The budget is listed on the Budgets page, and Intuit recommends checking it for accuracy once it's created or imported. Select the budget, then the edit icon to give it a name. To work from historical data, turn on Compare reference data and choose your reference points; ticking accounts and then choosing Copy reference data from the Batch actions dropdown fills those figures in. Adjust amounts in the Yearly, Quarterly or Monthly view, then select Save or Save and close.

From the Budgets page, the Actions column handles the rest. Duplicate in its dropdown makes a copy. Run Budgets vs. Actuals report sets your budget against actual income and expenses, and Run Budget Overview report is in the same dropdown. To remove a budget, tick its box and choose Delete from the dropdown. That can't be reversed, since Intuit says a deleted budget can't be recovered.

Intuit's advice for class budgets is to keep checking progress against each class's goal, so problems show up while there's still time to act.

If an import goes wrong, check the file against Intuit's conditions. Only a profit and loss budget can be imported, the spreadsheet has to be 10MB or smaller, and Intuit warns against adding new rows or columns for extra accounts, so figures go only in the rows the template already has.

If your screens look different, Intuit's article on class budgets gives another route: go to Settings and select Budgeting, find the budget, then select the small arrow next to Edit to run Budgets vs. Actuals.