Take a Vacation From Long-Term Financial Concerns: Use Peachtree’s Budgeting Tools
As summer winds down and vacation time for your kids dwindles, you’re probably making plans for next year’s adventures. You may be relaxed from your time off and full of ideas about what—and what not—to do next summer, based on how this year’s time off went.
Peachtree’s budgeting tools can provide the same combination of relaxation and anticipation in your professional life. Rather than wondering whether you’re making enough money every month to meet expenses (and how that will play out long-term), you’ll be able to track cash flow, spot problems ahead of time, and tweak your financial blueprint. And the knowledge that budgeting affords you will help you plan for future years.
Numerous options
Budgets are not available in Peachtree First Accounting. Peachtree Complete and Pro offer limitations (a single budget) that Peachtree Premium doesn’t have.
To get started (with Premium and sample data as our example), click Maintain | Budgets. A large grid-like screen opens, looking something like this:
Peachtree Premium’s budget grid works similarly to a typical spreadsheet.
First, enter a name for your budget in the Budget Name field. Write a description if you’d like. Tab to the first Type drop-down list. You’ll have several options here, including Income Statement Accounts, Balance Sheet Accounts, and Accounts Receivable. Select Income Statement Accounts to make your budget as comprehensive as possible.
You can further filter the content for your budget in the Segment fields. You can pare down your budget by selecting Departments, GL Accounts, or Wildcards (All is, of course, another option). If you’ve opted to pull out a subset, pull down the list next to Equal to:, and choose an entry there (the Equal To: list will change to reflect your choice).
To Show Inactive, check that box, and then select a fiscal year for your budget. Click Save on the toolbar.
And Now he Hard Part…
If you’ve never created a budget before, you may have some work ahead of you. You’ll need to enter numbers in all applicable cells in the grid. Consult your accounting professional if you’re taking this on. You’ll be able to edit the budget as the year goes along, but it’s important to be realistic about your prospects from the start.
If you’ve been using Peachtree faithfully for more than a year, you’ll have a much easier time of it. You can pull in actual data from your Peachtree file to fill in the cells.
Click on Autofill in the toolbar, and you’ll see this dialog box:
If you have an existing budget from a prior year, or have been using Peachtree for more than a year, you can automate much of the budget process.
Click the first button to select it, and click Next. To move fiscal year 2010’s data into FY2011, select This Year in the first drop-down list. The dates in the next two fields should change to match it. If your fiscal years start on January 1, select that date in the drop-down list below; otherwise, select the appropriate date. It should look like this:
It’s easy to set up a transfer of Peachtree data from the current year into next year’s budget.
Click Finish. Your prior year’s data now displays as budget totals for next year. Of course, you’ll be missing the last few months of 2010 when you run this example. You can either extrapolate or wait until closer to year’s end to run a complete budget.
You can also copy one budget to another. Open the desired budget, click Autofill, and select Copy amounts from the open budget.
More Useful Tools
The toolbar gives you access to other tools that further extend the usefulness of your budgets. You can use these tools to help you:
- export your budget to Excel for additional massaging
- attach related documents to your budget
- take notes
- or run reports.
The latter is critical. Peachtree Accounting helps you keep an eagle eye on how you’re adhering to your budget. You should run these reports often to evaluate your current situation and plan for future budgets.
Peachtree provides numerous tools to help you work with your budgets.
Be Budget Smart
You can’t successfully run a business without a carefully crafted budget any more than you can erect a building without a blueprint. Before getting started with the budgeting process, give us a call and we’ll help you make the right moves.
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