Using QuickBooks Budgets and Forecast Reports

The QuickBooks Budgets & Forecasts Reports lets you see how well your company is performing and compare your actual revenues and expenses to your company’s budgeted amounts. You can use these reports to identify cost savings opportunities, possibilities for expanding on revenue sources and errors or omissions for incorrect accounting entries with these reports.

You will find a list of QuickBooks Budgets & Forecasts Reports along with a description of the information contained in the report below.

Budgets

QuickBooks Budgets Reports give you information about your budgeted revenues and expenses.

• Budget Overview: The Budget Overview Report gives you your companies budgeted monthly revenues and expenses.
• Budget vs. Actual: The Budget vs. Actual Report lets you compare your company’s actual revenues and expenses to your company’s budgeted amounts, and gives you your variance, so you know whether you are over or under budget.
• Profit & Loss Budget Performance: The Profit & Loss Budget Performance Report is similar to the Budget vs. Actual Report, except that the actual revenues and expenses are compared to the budgeted amounts for the current month and current year.
• Budget vs. Actual Graph: The Budget vs. Actual Graph gives you a graphical display of your budget-to-actual revenue and expense variances.

Forecasting

QuickBooks Forecasting gives you reports to assist with your company’s projections of future revenues and expenses.

• Forecast Overview: The Forecast Overview Report tells you what your company’s monthly forecasted income and expenses are for a particular time period that you select.
• Forecast vs. Actual: The Forecast vs. Actual Report gives you the budget-to-actual revenues and expenses or account balances compared to the forecasted or projected amounts.

More QuickBooks Reports

As one of the most popular accounting software programs for small businesses, QuickBooks has a comprehensive suite of accounting and financial reports to meet your reporting needs.

QuickBooks has reports available in the following areas:

• Company & Financial Reports tell you how your company is doing financially.
• Customer & Receivable Reports show you how much your customers owe you.
• Sales Reports give you information about sales rep, sales orders, and pending sales.
• Jobs, Time & Mileage Reports tell you about your job estimates, including time, the amount spent, and mileage for each job.
• Vendor & Payable Reports show you how much money your company owes to its vendors.
• Purchase Reports and Inventory Reports give you information about your company’s purchases and its open purchase orders, including inventory value, stock, and work-in-progress.
• Employees & Payroll Reports show you information about your employees and payroll expenses.
• Banking Reports give you information about your banking transactions.
• Accountant & Taxes Reports give you information about your basic accounting reports and information needed to prepare your income tax return.
• Lists Reports show phone, contact, and customer lists that you will find useful.

You can also customize these reports or build your own reports within QuickBooks to meet your specific reporting preferences. However, most small business owners will find that QuickBooks has enough pre-built reports to meet their accounting and financial reporting needs. Given that QuickBooks is a low-cost accounting software solution, with more versions available for an extra fee, it is a comprehensive accounting software solution for the small business owner.​