A budget earns its keep only when you compare it with what happened. Here the plan and the actuals sit on the same accounts, so the variance is always one view away and always current to the cent.
Plan the year
Budgets are kept per entity and per fiscal year. Open Budget, pick the entity, and switch to the Plan view.
- Create a budget for the fiscal year if none exists yet, and give it a name. A new plan is named for its year by default.
- Fill the grid. Accounts run down the side and the months across the top. Enter the amount you expect for each account and month: income for a revenue account, spending for an expense account.
- Leave the rest at zero. You only plan the lines you actually care about. An unbudgeted account still shows its actual against a zero plan, which surfaces spending you did not expect.
The grid uses the same chart of accounts your journal posts to, so a budgeted line is a line you can track. Plan against the accounts you file taxes on, and the variance you read later is the one that matters.
Budgets are per entity. In a group view, Ledger shows the budget of one entity at a time and says so.
Track against actual
The Track view is the default. It shows one month at a time: what you budgeted, what you spent and what is left, grouped by category. A line that has gone over its budget says by how much.
- Actuals come straight from posted journal entries. There is no second copy to reconcile and no import step. When you post, the actual moves.
- Amounts are exact decimals. The gap you read is the real gap, not a rounding artifact.
- Move through months and years with the month controls, and switch entities with the entity tabs.
Check it once a month, after the close. A rough budget you actually look at beats a perfect one you never open. The most common mistake is planning against categories that do not match your accounts, so the comparison never lines up.
Forecast the rest
A forecast is a separate named budget, built from drivers, that projects the months that are not closed yet. The full-year picture blends what happened with what you still expect.
- Drivers project a profit-and-loss account from a few numbers that move it. A driver has a label, a rate and a quantity, with an optional unit, such as a headcount multiplied by a monthly cost.
- Posted actuals replace projections. For a month whose period is closed, the forecast shows the posted actual. For later months, it shows the driver projection.
- Scenario overlays layer adjustment rows on top of the base plan. Switch an overlay on to apply it and off to compare with the base. Creating and toggling overlays never changes the base budget.
Keep the original budget as the target and use the forecast for the number you now expect. Three months in, you know more than you did on day one.
Cash outlook
The cash forecast in Reports projects the next 13 weeks of cash from today's books. Use it when the question is runway, not profit.
Budget and cash forecast answer different questions. A month can beat its budget and still be tight on cash, and the other way round.
Ask your agent
Once your agent is connected, it can read the plan the same way you do, with a read scope only. Tools such as al_budget_vs_actual, al_budgets_list, al_budget_forecast and al_cash_forecast return the budget against actual, the budgets and forecasts in scope, a budget's driver and overlay forecast, and the bounded 13-week cash forecast.
Try "Why are travel expenses over budget?" It reads the variance, not your credentials. It cannot change a budget or post anything. See Connect your agent.