Maintain Budgets
The Maintain Budgets window lets you build a forecast of dollar amounts for selected accounts for each fiscal period. You can filter the accounts you budget for by account type (income statement accounts, expenses, etc.).
To open the Maintain Budgets window, from the Maintain menu, select Budgets.
When you close the year in Sage 50, your budgets automatically "roll over." That is, a new budget is created for the current year, based on the previous year's budget. You can then tweak the new budget as needed.
Note: You can maintain a single budget, for up to four years of information (the two open years and the year before and after) (Sage 50 Pro Accounting).
If you need more than a single budget, you can maintain as many different budgets as needed in Sage 50 Premium Accounting. (Sage 50 Premium Accounting and higher)
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Creating
a new budget
(Sage 50 Premium Accounting and higher)
You can create a new budget from scratch, by copying an existing budget, or by using actual data.
Creating a budget from scratch
Copying
a budget to Excel
You can copy a budget to a Microsoft Excel worksheet (.xls). Simply open the budget in Maintain Budgets and click the Excel button in the toolbar.
Formulas and most formatting are preserved. You can also copy and paste a range of cells between Sage 50 and Excel.
Importing
and exporting budget data
You can import and export budget data in a comma-separated format (.CSV) that can be read by spreadsheet programs or text editors.
Filtering
the accounts for this budget
Use the Account Filters to determine the accounts that display for your budget. You can filter by account type (income, expense, etc.). You can also filter by account segment(Sage 50 Premium Accounting and higher) or department mask (Sage 50 Premium Accounting or lower). Check the box to show Inactive accounts, or accounts scheduled to be purged at year-end.
Selecting
, adjusting, and allocating budget data
When working with budgets, it's easy to copy and paste cells, adjust and round amounts, allocate amounts, or select rows, columns, or cells.
Selecting and Copying/Pasting/Clearing Cells
- Click on the cell in one corner of the range of cells with your left mouse, and drag to the opposite corner. The range you've highlighted will be shaded.
-OR_
- Click on the cell in one corner of the range of cells. Hold down the Shift key, and click on the opposite corner.
- Use the Copy Quick Action Button, or right-click and select Cut, Copy, Paste, or Clear.
Adjusting/Rounding Budget Amounts
- Once you've selected a group of cells, click the Adjust Quick Action Button, or right-click and select Adjust.
- You can enter a dollar amount or percentage to adjust amounts by. You can also round the selected cells to the nearest dollar, hundreds, or thousands.
Allocating Budget Amounts
-
You can easily allocate a total amount for an account across the whole year. Click on the Total cell for the account in the grid. Right-click and choose Allocate Total Amount. Enter the total amount you want to allocate across the whole year. Click OK..
Note: You can also select Allocate Total Amount from the Edit menu.
- The amount is evenly distributed over all periods of the year for that account. For example, if you have 12 periods and the total amount is $7500, the amount for each period will be $625.
- If the amount cannot be evenly distributed, any rounding differences will be adjusted in the last period. For example, if you have 12 periods and the total amount is $5000, the amount for periods 1 - 11 is $416.67 and the amount for period 12 is $416.63.
Setting
alerts for budgets
You can set up alerts to let you know when specific accounts are over or under budget, for the current period or year.
Troubleshooting
budgets
If you create a budget using actual amounts for balance sheet accounts, beginning balance amounts may not come across. This is because Sage 50 tracks activity for balance-sheet accounts, not balances.
To correct this, you could do one of two things:
- Add the missing beginning balance into the first period of the first year of your budget.
-OR-
- From an existing budget with a correct prior-year balance, use the Save As button to create a new budget. Then use the AutoFill button to fill in your budget with actual amounts.
Help
with specific fields or buttons
If you need help with a specific field, click on the field name below.
Add an Attachment
You can attach files, such as Word or Excel documents, to a budget. How do I add an attachment?