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Copy Quick Budgets

Once you have completed creating your blank quick budget, you can copy it to use it for:

  • What if scenarios: “What if” scenario planning and creating a next year’s budget is an important tool in business risk management. This allows you to identify the possible risk to cash flow and profits of future market trends and make the appropriate changes to the budget.  Also, ‘What If’ scenarios let you test the effects on profit margins and cash flow of the introduction of new enterprises into the business or lets you test changes to established enterprises, such as increasing livestock numbers or producing a new crop.

    One of the best ways to test “What If” scenarios in the budget is to make a copy and test the changes on the copy.  The copy will be the same as the original but the name must differ (ie: Copy of Budget Mar 16 – Feb 17).

  • Importing actuals: You can also make a copy your budget to import the actuals (data from the cashbook), this will give you the actuals for the months that have passed in the budget period and still show the budgeted figures for the remainder of the year. This can be very useful for tax estimates and to see how you are tracking.
  • Budget comparisons: You can also use the completed quick budget to do a budget comparison report.

Note: If you are intending to do a budget comparison report you should copy your budget first and import the actuals from the cashbook into the copy of the budget.   If you do not do this, then you will lose your original budget figures, as they will be overwritten by the importation process and you will not be able to compare budget to actuals

How to Copy a Quick Budget

To copy a Quick Budget, you will need to:

  1. At the Home Page, click Budget 
  2. Click Quick Budget 
  3. Click Copy Quick Budget 
  4. From the Select Quick Budget to Copy list, select the existing budget you wish to copy 
  5. Type a new name in the box Name of Copy 
  6. Click the green tick

Copy Budget 1 year forward

You can choose to shift dates forward 1 year if the Quick Budget is to be used for a future year.

  1. Follow the steps above
  2. At Step 5, tick the box Shift Dates Forward 1 Year 
  3. In Step 6, ensure the name shows the correct date of the new budget.

Importing Actuals from the Cashbook

A common scenario is to import the Cashbook figures into the copied budget.  Each month after the cashbook is reconciled, the cashbook data is imported into the copy.  Adjustments are made to resolve anomalies between the imported figures and the budget figures and future balances can be examined to see if plans need to be altered.

To import the Cashbook:

  1. Open the copy of the budget you want to import the Cashbook into
  2. You will see the Quick Budget Screen. Click the Import button 
  3. The following dialogue box will be displayed 
    • Import What?: Click to select whether to import data by cheque date (Cashbook as Entered) or the date it was cleared on the bank statement (Cashbook as Cleared)
    • Import which codes?: The window will default to All codes selected and highlighted.  If you wish to select codes to import, click Select to remove highlighting
    • To select codes: To select specific codes, use the directions shown on the window
    • Last month to import: Select the last month you wish to import data from
  4. Click  to import cashbook data
  5. After importing the cashbook to a copy of your budget, you may find it necessary to edit the last imported month, particularly if the month has not been reconciled. The cells filled with cashbook data will be grey and locked from editing.  You can unlock those cells by clicking the Unlock Cashbook button 
  6. If you need to erase or change any cashbook figures in the grey locked area of the direct entry section (due to possible doubling up of figures) you would:
  7. Click on the Unlock Cashbook button to unlock the cashbook data
  8. Click on the relevant code
  9. Click on the grey box in the month where the figure needs deleting
  10. Press the delete key. Re-lock the cashbook by clicking the Lock Cashbook  button.
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