QuickBooks has a budget and forecast area in the Company menu but this is not where you want to go to set up a budget for a single project to be able to track the budgeted vs. actual. You will also want to be able to run various kinds of job cost reports, but you won’t get that information using the company budget and forecast feature. If you want to be able to set up a project and compare actual to estimated costs, and have all of the reporting that goes with that, you have to start by creating an estimate. The estimate IS the budget. It shows both the cost and revenue. Then it’s a matter of making sure you run all costs through those items so that you can track the actual against the estimated. This video shows you how to begin laying out the estimate. Then we’ll look at how to complete the budget in the next video and blog post.
