What's New in QuickBooks: Reviewing Balance Sheet Budgets

A Balance Sheet report gives you a financial snapshot of your company as of a specific date.

The Balance Sheet calculates how much your business is worth (your business's equity) by subtracting all the money your company owes (liabilities) from everything it owns (assets). Your company's total equity includes your net income for the fiscal year to date.

Balance Sheet Budgets, like Profit & Loss budgets, help you manage your financial performance and plan for future financial goals.

QuickBooks Online (QBO) lets you create balance sheet budgets to track your assets, liabilities, and equity against your planned business activities. QBO also provides tools for viewing and comparing your balance sheet budgets with your actual data.

To create and report on Balance Sheet budgets in QBO:

• Navigate to Budgeting: Inside QBO, or QBO-Accountant, go to Settings ⚙ and select Budgeting.
• Create New Budget: Select Create New, then choose Balance Sheet as the budget type. 
• Set the Fiscal Year: Specify the fiscal year for your budget. 
• Choose a Period: Select if you want to budget on a yearly, quarterly, or monthly basis. 
• Enter Budget Amounts: Input your budget amounts for each account for each period. 
• Save Your Work: Make sure to Save your budget.  
• Report Your Budget vs Actual: Run a "Budgets vs. Actuals" report to compare your actual balance sheet values against your budgeted balance sheet amounts.

By comparing your Balance Sheet actual with your Budgeted Balance Sheet values, you can identify areas where you may need to adjust your spending, accelerate your revenue (Accounts Receivable) collections, re-balance your inventory to more closely reflect your sales expectations, and also work at lowering your debts (liabilities) to a more manageable percentage of your overall profitability. 

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