A budget in GoodBooks is a fiscal-year plan for your revenue and expense categories. Enter it once — annually or month by month — and the budget reports compare it against your actual books all year, flagging categories that are running hot before they become a problem.
Availability: Foundation plan and up. Monthly budgets need Core and up; per-fund budgets are a Pro feature. Find it under Accounting → Budgets.
Creating a budget
From Budgets, click to add a new budget:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Name | e.g. "Operating Budget FY2026". |
| Fiscal Year | Which fiscal year this budget covers. The year label is the calendar year your fiscal year ends in. |
| Entry mode | Annual — one number per category for the year. Monthly (Core and up) — a 12-month grid, for organizations whose activity is seasonal. This choice is permanent for the budget. |
| Fund (Pro) | Leave as organization-wide, or budget a single fund. You can have one live budget per fund per year, plus the org-wide one. |
| Start From | Optional: copy the amounts from an existing budget as your starting point. |
You can have one live budget per fiscal year (per fund, on Pro). To redo a year, archive the old budget first — archiving keeps it viewable but frees the year for a new one.
Entering the amounts
Open the budget and you'll see every active revenue and expense account in your chart of accounts, laid out the way the chart is: sub-accounts are indented under their parent, in account-number order if you use account numbers.
- Annual mode — one amount per account.
- Monthly mode — a column per month, starting with the first month of your fiscal year. The annual total is computed for you as you type.
Only fill in what you budget — accounts left at zero simply aren't part of the budget (they'll still show on the comparison report if they have actual activity, so nothing hides). Commas in amounts are fine.
Rolling into next year
When the new fiscal year approaches, use Copy Forward — it clones the whole budget into the next fiscal year (bumping the year in the name) so you can adjust from last year's numbers instead of starting blank.
Good to know
- Budget amounts can be edited all year — the reports always compare against the current numbers. Many treasurers formally revise mid-year; just edit the grid.
- The budget follows your chart of accounts, not campaigns or grants. Budget the categories; use grant tracking and campaign reports for restricted money.
- Deactivating an account removes it from the budget grid and reports; if you reactivate the account later, its budget line comes back.
- Deleting a budget removes it and its amounts entirely. If the year is over, archive instead — it keeps the history for year-over-year comparison.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.