Maintain Budgets

Related topics

Create a budget from scratch

Create a budget from actual data

Copy from an existing budget

Perform other Sage 50 General Ledger procedures

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)

You can copy a budget to a Microsoft Excel worksheet. 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.

Copying a budget to Excel

You can import and export budget data in a comma-separated format (.CSV) that can be read by spreadsheet programs or text editors.

Importing/exporting budget data

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.

When working with budgets, it's easy to copy and paste cells, adjust and round amounts, allocate amounts, or select rows, columns, or cells.

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.

You can set up alerts to let you know when specific accounts are over or under budget, for the current period or year.

Using alerts with 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.

If you need help with a specific field, click on the field name below.

Budget Name: The name can be up to thirty characters. A budget name can be automatically created based on the description, provided this option is checked in Maintain Global Options.

Description: The description can be up to fifty characters. The description is optional.

Type: The default filter for budgets is for Income Statement accounts (Income and Expense), but you can create a budget for any group of accounts.

Account Segment: In Sage 50 Premium Accounting and above, you can filter the accounts that display by account segment.

Department Mask: In Sage 50 Premium Accounting and Sage 50 Pro Accounting, you can filter the accounts that display by department mask.

Show Inactive: Accounts marked as Inactive are scheduled to be purged when you close the fiscal year. Check the box to exclude these accounts from your budget.

You can view and enter amounts for four years--the two open fiscal years, as well as the year before and the year after them.

You can resize the grid. You can copy, paste, and adjust individual cells or contiguous groups of cells.

Selecting a Range of 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.

Adjusting Amounts

  • Enter the amount to adjust by. It can be negative or positive. The default is to adjust by dollars, but you can select to adjust by a percentage.
  • Check "Round amount to the nearest..." to enable rounding.
  • Then, select to round to the nearest dollar, hundreds of dollars, or thousands of dollars.

You can attach files, such as Word or Excel documents, to a budget. How do I add an attachment?