Budgets

As a business, you are expected to set targets to forecast how your business is going to perform, either for increasing your revenue or for decreasing your expenses. These targets are called budgets.

However, businesses usually do not perform as forecasted. The performance of your business (otherwise known as actuals) is prone to unprecedented events, making it hard for businesses to meet the budget targets they had set initially. If you’ve been using Zoho Books diligently, you would have an idea of how your business is performing by tracking your receivables and payables.

Using Zoho Books, you can now reflect on how your business is performing by comparing your projected budget versus the actual performance of your business using very extensive and insightful reports. This process is also known as Budget Variance.

In this page…

Create Budget

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Click + New Budget in the top right corner.

Enter the following details:

Field	Description
Name	Enter a name to identify your budget.
Fiscal Year	Select the financial year for which you would like to create a budget.
Budget Period	Select a time period for your budget. The budget period can either be monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly.

You can associate reporting tags to your budgets as well. To do this:

Click Create this budget for a specific reporting tag.
Select the tag name and choose an option.

Next, you can record the budgets for your income and expenses. To record them, you can:

Enter Them Manually

If you would like to enter the budget manually, you can enter the amounts in the fields provided next to the respective accounts. Once you have recorded the budget for your income and expenses, the Net Profit and Loss will be automatically calculated by Zoho Books.

Pre-fill based on Previous Years’ Actuals

If you would like to create a budget based on one of your previous year’s business performance, you can do just that in Zoho Books.

Click Pre-fill from Previous Years’ Actuals.
Select a previous year.
Click Pre-fill.

The Net Profit and Loss will be automatically calculated by Zoho Books.

Auto-fill accounts

Instead of entering the amount for each account and period individually, you can just enter the amount for the first period for an account and choose to auto-fill values for the subsequent periods (monthly, quarterly or half-yearly). The amounts in the subsequent periods will be auto-filled based on the first period amount and the following criteria:

Auto-Fill by Applying Fixed Amount for Each Period

If your business is projected to earn the same income or incur the same expense for each period in your budget, you can select this option. You will have to enter a fixed amount for the a period. The subsequent periods will be auto-filled with the initial amount you’ve entered.

Auto-Fill by Adjusting the Amount for Each Period

If your business is projected to earn income or incur expenses based on adjustments to amounts, you can select this option. You’ll be able to add the adjustment amount to the:

Add the adjustment amount to the first period’s amount

You can enter an amount for the first period and the subsequent periods will be auto-filled based on the adjustment amount.

Scenario: If you have set the first period’s amount as 1000 and the adjustment amount for each period as 100, then 1000 will be amount for the first period, 1100 for the second, 1200 for the third and so on.

Pro Tip: You can add the negative symbol (-) if you want the amounts in the subsequent periods to depreciate.

Add the adjustment amount for each period’s existing amount

You can select this option if you’ve already entered your budget and you wish to update them with an adjustment amount.

Scenario: Say, you want to create a budget such that you want to add 100 to the accounts of the previous years’ budgets. Let’s assume the previous years’ budgets for first three periods are 1000, 2000, and 1500. When you enter your adjustment amount as 100, the amounts for the newly created budget for the first three periods will be 1100, 2100 and 1600 respectively.

Pro Tip: You can add the negative symbol (-) if you want the amounts in the subsequent periods to depreciate.

Auto-Fill by Adjusting the Percentage for Each Period

If your business is projected to earn income or incur expenses based on a percentage, you can select this option. You’ll be able to add the percentage to the:

Add the adjustment percentage to the first period’s amount

You can enter an amount for the first period and the subsequent periods will be auto-filled based on the percentage of adjustment.

Scenario: If you have set the first period’s amount as 1000 and the adjustment for each period is 10%, then 1000 will be amount for the first period, 1100 for the second, 1210 for the third and so on.

Pro Tip: You can add the negative symbol (-) if you want the amounts in the subsequent periods to depreciate.

Add the adjustment amount for each period’s existing amount

You can select this option if you’ve already entered your budget and you wish to update them with a percentage of adjustment.

Scenario: Say, you want to create a budget such that you expect a 10% increase to the accounts of the previous year’s budget. Let’s assume the previous year’s budget for the first three periods as 1000, 2000, and 1500 respectively. When you enter the percentage of adjustment as 10, the amounts for the newly created budget for the first three periods will be 1100, 2200 and 1650 and so on.

Pro Tip: You can add the negative symbol (-) if you want the amounts in the subsequent periods to depreciate.

Compare Budgets Vs Actuals (Budget Summary)

Once you have created a budget, you can know how your business is actually performing against your foretasted budget. You will be able to compare your budget vs actuals using a comprehensive report including the over budget of your budget variance. To compare them:

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Click View Budget Vs Actuals next to a budget that you’ve created.

You will also be able to:

Export Budget Summary

You can export your organization’s budget summary as a PDF, XLS, XLSX format.

Pro-tip: If you use Zoho Sheets, you can export your organization’s budget summary to Zoho Sheets as well.

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Select the budget.
Click View Budget Vs Actuals.
Click Export As in the top right corner and choose your preferred format.

Customize Budget Summary

You can run your budget summary report based on the name of the budget and account type (All Accounts, Active Accounts, Budget Accounts, Budget or Active Accounts). To customize your budget summary:

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Select the budget.
Click View Budget Vs Actuals.
Click Customize Report in the top left corner.
Select the budget, filter, report basis and the budget period.

Field	Description
Filter	Run your report based on the account type. You can select all accounts, active accounts, budget accounts and budget or active accounts.
Report Basis	You can run your report based on the type of income and expenses, It can be Accural or Cash.
Budget Period	Run your report based on monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly budget periods.

The accounts that can be filtered have been mentioned below:

Filter	Description
Active Accounts	This option will filter only the accounts for which you’ve recorded a transaction. This includes your income and expense account.
Budget Accounts	This option will filter only the accounts for which you’ve created a budget.
Active or Budget Accounts	This option will filter both active and budget accounts.
All Accounts	This option will filter every account that has been recorded in Zoho Books.

Insight: If you had set a certain budget period say, quarterly while creating your budget, you can run your reports based on other budget periods (monthly, half-yearly or yearly) as well.

Click Run Report.

Print Budget Summary

To print a copy of your budget summary:

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Select the budget.
Click View Budget Vs Actuals.
Click the Print icon in the top right corner.
Click Print.

More Actions

You can also perform certain actions for your budgets. You will be able to:

Edit Budget

If you have any changes that are to be made to your budgets, you can edit them anytime. To edit a budget:

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Click the dropdown next to a budget you’ve created.
Click Edit.

Clone Budget

If want to replicate a budget you had made earlier, you can just clone them. To clone a budget:

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Click the dropdown next to a budget you’ve created.
Click Clone.

Download Budget

You can download your budgets to your system as a PDF. To download your budget:

Go to Accountant > Budgets.
Select the budget you would like to download.
Click the PDF icon in the top right corner to start the download the budget as a PDF.