Quick Books® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Preparing a Budget

In This Chapter

• Reviewing common budgeting tactics

• Following the practical approach to budgeting

• Using the Set Up Budgets window

• Managing with the budget

Budgets provide business owners and managers with powerful tools for better managing a firm's operation. A budget can give the business owner or manager a way to more easily and more quantifiably manage the people working for the business. A budget can often identify problems or opportunities early. Finally, a budget truly gives the owner or manager a way to plan out the year's operation, think about what's most important, and quantify what the firm should achieve over the year.

For these reasons, this chapter discusses some practical, common-sense approaches to budgeting within QuickBooks. I think you'll be surprised at how straightforward this process is.

Reviewing Common Budgeting Tactics

Before I get into a detailed discussion of how you create a budget and use that budget within QuickBooks, I want to briefly identify and describe three very useful and common budgeting tactics: top-line budgeting, zero-based budgeting, and benchmarking. None of these three tactics is complicated. You probably know of and understand at least two of them already. You should consider all these tactics, however, as you construct formal or informal budgets for your business.

Top-line budgeting

A top-line budget is the simplest budget technique available. A top-line budget takes last year's numbers or last month's numbers and ...