Planning & Budgeting

A budget is your profit-and-loss plan for one fiscal year: an amount for every month on each income and expense account you plan for. You can split it by branch, location and customer in any combination, so "rent for the Kandy branch" or "sales to your top 20 customers" each get their own line. The owner or accountant usually builds it before the year starts, then watches it against the ledger in Budget vs Actual.

A budget is planning data. It posts nothing, takes no document number, and does not change any balance or report other than Budget vs Actual.

Find budgets under Finance → Budgets.

Gated feature

Before you start

• Check Fiscal year start month under Settings → General (see Organization settings). A budget takes its year from this setting when you create it, and keeps that year even if the setting changes later.
• The income and expense accounts you plan for must exist in your Chart of Accounts. Any active profit-and-loss account can take a line, including a parent account.
• To split by branch, location or customer, set up your Branches, Warehouses & Locations and Customers first.
• You need the budget permissions listed under Permissions below.

Create a budget

1. Open the budget list

   Go to Finance → Budgets and select New budget.

2. Name it and pick the year

   • Name (required): for example "Operating budget".
   • Fiscal year (required): last year, this year or one of the next two, starting on your fiscal year start month.

3. Choose the splits

   Under Split by, tick any of Branch, Location and Customer, or none for one line per account. The splits are fixed once the budget is created. To drop one later, copy the budget (see Lifecycle below). To add one, create a new budget with that split and start it from this one under Another budget; its lines land on the new split's Other line.

4. Choose where it starts from

   Under Start from:

   • Blank: no lines. You add them yourself.
   • Last year's actuals (the default): one line per account (and split value) that had postings, filled month by month from what the ledger holds. Actuals from picks last year or the year before; each month lands on the same month of the new budget. On a new workspace with no postings last year, this gives an empty budget; add lines yourself.
   • Another budget: copies an existing budget's months. A split the new budget does not use is merged.

   For the two pre-filled choices, Adjust by % raises or lowers every month (for example 8 for 8% growth) and Round each month rounds to the cent, 10, 100 or 1,000. On a customer split filled from actuals, Top customers (20 by default, up to 500) sets how many customers, ranked by last year's revenue, get lines of their own; the rest go to Other customers.

5. Create it

   Select Create. The budget opens in the editor as a Draft. If the pre-fill had to move or leave out any amounts (for example actuals of a branch that is now inactive), a message lists them.

Enter the amounts

The editor's Budget tab is a grid: one row per line, with the total and the row tools next to the account and the twelve months after them. Rows are grouped by section (Revenue, Cost of sales, Expenses, Other revenue, Other expenses, and Other profit and loss for any other profit-and-loss account type), then by account in code order, then by split. A parent account's row adds up the lines beneath it, each section closes on its own total, Gross profit follows cost of sales, and Net profit comes last, laid out as in Budget vs Actual. The saved totals sit under the budget's title.

The branch, location and customer filters above the grid are shared with the Budget vs Actual tab: pick a location on either tab and the other follows. ZyncLedger remembers the open tab and the filters for each budget in your browser.

Enter each amount as a positive figure in its natural direction: income you expect to earn, costs you expect to spend.

• Type in a cell to start editing, or press Enter or F2.
• Enter, Tab or an arrow key keeps the value and moves on; Esc cancels; Delete clears the cell.
• Paste from Excel: copy a block of cells, select the cell where its top-left corner should go, and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac).
• Use Search accounts and splits and the split filters above the grid to narrow a long budget.

Add a line

Select Add line. Pick the Account (required), then a Branch, Location and Customer for each split the budget uses. Leave a split empty and the line is that split's Other line (see What "Other" means below). Any account can take a customer. Select Add line to put it in the grid.

When you pick an account, branch, location or customer that has children, the dialog warns that only postings made directly to it count. Its sub-accounts, sub-branches, sub-locations or sub-customers need lines of their own, or their actuals show as Unbudgeted or under Other.

Use the row tools

Each row's Row tools menu (the ⋯ button) has:

Tool	What it does
Spread evenly	Spreads the Annual total you type across the twelve months.
Spread this row like last year	Reshapes the row's own total to last year's monthly pattern. Type an Annual total first and the button becomes Spread the total like last year. An Other line, or a line with no postings of its own, uses the account's pattern; with no postings at all, it spreads evenly.
Adjust by %	Raises or lowers every month by a percentage (between -100 and 1000).
Fill right from (month)	Copies the selected month's amount into every month after it.
Round to 1,000 / Round to 100	Rounds every month.
Clear	Sets every month to zero.
Remove line	Removes the line.

Save

Select Save (it shows how many changes are waiting), or press Ctrl+S (Cmd+S on a Mac). Leaving the page with unsaved changes asks you first.

A budget holds up to 5,000 lines.

Pre-fill an existing budget

Pre-fill in the editor's toolbar fills a budget you have already created, from Last year's actuals or Another budget, with the same options as when you create one. It is available once your changes are saved. Under Lines already in the budget, choose:

• Replace every line: the budget becomes the pre-fill; lines it does not produce are removed.
• Add to the amounts: each month is added onto the line it matches.
• Fill empty months only: a month that already holds an amount keeps it.

In every mode, lines the pre-fill produces that the budget does not have yet are added. Replacing the lines of an Active budget asks you to tick I understand first, because Budget vs Actual changes at once.

Export and import

Export downloads the budget as an Excel workbook: account code and name, a column for each split (two for customer: name and code), the twelve months, a total and a note. It exports every line, unsaved changes included; search and filters do not narrow it.

To make changes in Excel and bring them back:

1. Export and edit

   Select Export, then edit the months (and notes) in Excel. You can add rows, and add or reorder columns; ZyncLedger finds each column by its heading. The total column is ignored on import.

2. Choose the file

   Save the workbook as .xlsx, select Import, and choose the file.

3. Say what the file is

   Under The file, choose Is the budget (lines not in the file are removed) or Adds to the budget (its amounts are added onto matching lines). On an Active budget, Is the budget asks you to tick I understand first.

4. Read the check

   ZyncLedger checks the file without saving anything and tells you how many lines importing will add, change and remove, or lists each row that cannot be imported and why.

5. Import

   Fix any rows in the file and choose it again, then select Import. The file is imported whole or not at all.

How rows are matched: an account by its code, or by its name when the code is blank; a branch or location by name; a customer by code, or by name. A blank split cell, or one reading Other branches, Other locations or Other customers (as the export writes them), is the Other line. When a name could mean more than one record and the choice is not clear (an active record, then the one this budget already uses), the row is refused rather than guessed. A file whose month headings belong to a different fiscal year is refused.

Lifecycle

Status	What it means	Can you edit it?
Draft	Being prepared. Budget vs Actual can show it, but Reports lists it only on request.	Yes
Active	The plan in force.	Yes, and saved changes show in Budget vs Actual at once.
Superseded	An earlier version, replaced by an activated revision.	No
Archived	Retired.	No

The actions sit on each row of the budget list and in the editor's toolbar. Save first: in the editor they are unavailable while the grid has unsaved changes.

• Activate (Draft only) makes the budget Active, so Reports lists it in Budget vs Actual by default. Activating a revision makes the budget it revised Superseded.
• Revise (Active only) opens a copy of the budget as its next revision: a Draft with the same name, marked Rev 1, Rev 2 and so on (the original is Rev 0). Use it when you want to keep the Active version as it was while you re-forecast. Activating the revision makes the original Superseded. Only one revision can be open at a time. Changes saved on the Active budget while a revision is open are not copied into the revision, and both budgets show a banner saying so.
• Copy starts a new, separate budget from this one, as a Draft. You can give it another name and year, drop splits (lines that differed only by a dropped split are merged, month by month) and adjust every month by a percentage. A copy cannot add a split.
• Archive makes the budget read-only and drops it from the Budget vs Actual picker in Reports (turn on Show drafts, superseded and archived to see it again). Its lines are kept; copy it to reuse them.
• Delete (Draft only) deletes the draft and its lines. It cannot be undone.

You can have more than one Active budget for the same year, for example an "Operating" and a "Stretch" budget. Budget vs Actual lets you pick which one to compare against.

What "Other" means

A line with an empty split is that split's Other line: Other branches, Other locations or Other customers. It holds the budget for everything you did not name on a line of its own, such as "revenue from customers other than my top 20". In Budget vs Actual, a posting whose branch, location or customer has no line of its own counts on the matching Other line. Point-of-sale sales (revenue and their cost of sales) carry no branch or customer, so on a branch or customer split they always count under Other.

Deleting a budgeted record

You cannot delete an account, branch, location or customer that a budget line uses, in any budget, whatever its status, and even while the app is uninstalled. The message names the budgets. Make the record inactive instead: the budget keeps the lines it was planned with.

Permissions

Grant budget access in a permission profile under Permissions, on its Budgets tab (the tab shows while the app is installed). Admins have every budget permission.

Permission	Allows
List Budgets	Opening the budget list and the editor. Selected automatically with any other.
Create Budgets (new, Revise, Copy)	New budget, Revise and Copy.
Edit Budgets (grid, Archive)	Changing lines, Pre-fill, Import and Archive. Without it a budget opens read-only.
Activate Budgets	Activate.
Delete Draft Budgets	Delete.

These permissions decide which buttons a user sees. Budget vs Actual under Reports follows the report permissions. See Users, seats & permissions.

Related

• Budget vs Actual compares the budget with what the ledger holds.
• Chart of Accounts holds the profit-and-loss accounts you budget.
• Organization settings sets the fiscal year start month a new budget uses.
• Branches, Warehouses & Locations and Customers are the values a budget can split by.