Using the budget feature

AgExpert Analyst’s budget feature enables you to:

• plan your income and expenses by creating a budget
• measure your business’ performance by comparing your budget to your actual income and expense values

The Budget window provides a budgeting period for each month or quarter of the current fiscal year. You can enter budget values for each month, or you can enter a total for the year. 

If you’re a sole proprietor or a partnership, you can budget your personal advance and personal drawing accounts, and your income and expense accounts.

You can access the Budgeting tool in AgExpert Analyst from the Management menu.

The Budgeting tool opens to the current fiscal year. However, you can generate the new fiscal year’s budget values from a previous year’s budget after you’ve added a new fiscal year to your data file. When you return to the Budget dialogue box, you’ll be asked if you want to copy last year’s budget forward. Click Yes. You can edit any copied budget values. 

Note: This option will be offered every time you open the Budget dialogue box until you’ve either clicked Yes or started entering new budget values manually.

Budget window

The Budget window has two sections:

1. The header section, located at the top of the dialogue box, is where you can select:
   • the fiscal year
   • the date range type 
   • to show a difference or a percentage between your actual and budget amounts
   • the Accounting Method
   • the Enterprises
   • the month, quarter or fiscal year: this will be used in the middle of the Budget window to display the budget versus actual.
2. The middle section is separated into two subsections:
   • Income
   • Expenses
3. Each subsection features the following columns:
   • Account - This column lists all budget accounts that have been assigned a budget value. 
   Note: If your business is a sole proprietor or a partnership, this section will list all income, expense, personal drawing and personal advance accounts. If your business is a corporation, it’ll only list income and expense accounts.
   • Actual - This column displays your actual balances. These values are pulled from the transactions you entered in AgExpert Analyst for the date range chosen.
   • Budget - This column displays your budget values for the date range chosen. To add budget values, see Defining Budget Values.
   • Difference or (%) - This column compares the amount or percentage between your actual and budget amounts.
   • Pie chart – This displays your actual income and expenses based on the header sections you defined in the chart of accounts.

Defining budget values

1. Click Edit Budget under either the Income or Expense section.
   Note: You can assign values to your budget using your header, primary, sub account or detail account.
   • Header – If you assign a budget value to the header account, you won’t be able to assign a value to the primary, sub or detail accounts that fall within that section.
   • Primary – If you assign a budget value to the primary account, you won’t be able to assign a value to the sub or header accounts that fall within that section.
   • Sub account – If you assign a budget value to the sub account, you won’t be able to assign a value to the primary or header accounts that fall within that section.
   • Detail - If you assign a budget value to the detail account, you won’t be able to assign a value to the header account that falls within that section. 
   • Note: You can right click on any line of the budget to select and complete one of the following actions:
     • Add Budget (only available in the Edit Budget mode) 
     • Edit Budget
     • Delete Budget
     • generate the General Ledger Report
2. To add budget amounts to an account:
   • Select the account and click the add  icon.
   • Select the budget details.
     • Yearly – Enter the budgeted amount for the year for this account.
     • Monthly – Enter the monthly amount for this account.
     • Monthly Variable – Enter the variable amount per month for this account
   • Click OK.
3. To edit the budget amounts:
   • Select the account with the budget amounts you want to edit and click the details  icon.
   • Make the desired changes.
   • Click OK.
4. To delete the budget amounts for an account, click the delete  icon.
5. To see more detailed information about the actual number pulling through, right-click a number to get a drilldown and open the menu.
6. Click Done Editing to apply your changes.
7. Click Print to generate a Budget report.
8. Click Close to close the Budget window.

Last updated on June 23, 2015 by FCC AgExpert