QuickBooks® 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Building the Perfect Budget

In This Chapter

• Checking out powerful tips for business budgets

• Setting up a budget

• Reviewing QuickBooks Planning & Budgeting tools

I don't think that a budget amounts to financial handcuffs, and neither should you. A budget is just a plan that outlines how you intend to generate sales, how you should spend your money, and your ideas about how you can best organize your firm's financial affairs.

Is This a Game You Want to Play?

If you created a good, workable Chart of Accounts, you're halfway to a good, solid budget. (In fact, for 99 out of 100 businesses, the only step left is to specify how much you earn in each income account and how much you spend in each expense account.)

Does every business need a budget? No, of course not. Maybe you have a simple financial plan that you can monitor some other way. Maybe in your business, you make money so effortlessly that you don't need to plan your income and outgo. Maybe Elvis Presley really is still alive and living somewhere in the Midwest.

For everyone else, though, a budget improves your chances of getting your business wherever you want it to go financially. It gives you a way to "plan your work and work your plan." In fact, I'll stop calling it a budget. The word has such negative connotations. I know — I'll call it The Secret Plan.

All Joking Aside: Some Basic Budgeting Tips

Before I walk you through the mechanics of outlining your Secret Plan, I want to give you a few tips. After that, I want to tell ...