Budgets

An accounting budget sets planned amounts per general-ledger account and period. SolaCount compares them with your posted journal activity and shows the variance, how much of each budget is used, and which accounts are near or over their limit. Budgets are only a plan: they never post anything to your books.

Plan availability: budgets need the Budgets plan feature. If Accounting Budgets and the Budgets report group are missing, your plan does not include it — the workspace owner can check Settings → Plan & Features.

Where to find it

The Accounting Budgets page ("Plan and control general-ledger budgets, with an optional project dimension, against posted accounting actuals.") shows:

• Budget utilization — planned amount compared with posted actuals across all your budgets, in base currency.
• Utilization by budget and Budget health — which budgets are on track, near limit or over budget.
• Accounting budget register — the list of budgets, with search and filters for fiscal year, period, status, project and account scope. Row menu: View Budget, Edit, Budget vs Actual, Duplicate, Export.
• Project planning budgets — shown separately; "Operational project plans are shown separately from the accounting budget register."

If the Projects rail is locked on your plan, open /budgets directly.

Create a budget

1. On Accounting Budgets, click New Accounting Budget. The page New finance budget opens ("Plan account balances and compare them with actual results."). At the top, a card titled Build your financial plan says "Set the budget period, choose accounts, and enter planned amounts for each period." Its About finance and project budgets link expands two notes: manage labor, materials and delivery costs in Project Budget Control inside each project (use the project dimension here only to tag accounting amounts), and compare finance and project budgets in the Budget vs Actuals reports.
2. Basics section (a card headed with your base currency, for example AED):

3. Accounts section ("Income, expense, and optional balance sheet accounts"): accounts are grouped into Income, Expense, Assets, Liabilities and Equity. Income and Expense are included by default. Tick individual accounts, or use Select all / Clear per group.
4. Budget Grid: one row per account, one column per period, and a Total column that updates as you type. Amounts are in base currency and cannot be negative.
   • Copy first period copies each row's first value into every period.
   • Clear all sets every cell to zero.
5. Click Save Finance Budget (bottom right). You see "Finance budget created." and land on the budget page.

The grid columns follow the Start date, End date and Period type you choose: change any of the three and the columns are rebuilt at once (Monthly gives one column per calendar month, Quarterly three months per column, Half yearly six, Yearly twelve, Custom a single column for the whole range, up to 240 columns). Amounts you already typed stay in the columns whose start date is unchanged; new columns start at 0.00. You can also open the form with a range in the address, for example /budgets/create?period_type=quarterly&start_date=2026-01-01&end_date=2026-12-31.

The forms were redesigned in October 2026. Each section (Basics, Accounts, Budget Grid) is its own card; the fields sit in two columns on a desktop and one column on a phone; the Budget Grid scrolls inside its card with the account name and the column headings kept in view; and all labels are translated, including Arabic. The form uses the dark theme when the app is in dark mode. The buttons at the foot of the grid card are Cancel and Save Finance Budget.

Edit, duplicate, export

• Edit (budget page, top right, or row menu) opens the same form; save shows "Finance budget updated."
• A locked or archived budget cannot be edited: "This budget is locked or archived. Duplicate it to create an editable copy." The budget page shows a Locked / Open badge.
• Duplicate creates an editable copy and opens it ("Budget duplicated.") — handy for next year's budget.
• Export downloads the budget lines as CSV.
• Deleting a locked budget is blocked: "Cannot delete a locked budget."

Budget vs actual

Open a budget and click Budget vs Actual. The Variance by Account and Period table shows, per account and period:

Headline tiles show total budget, actual, variance and remaining, and counts of near-limit and over-budget lines.

How actuals are calculated

• Only posted, non-void journal entries count ("From posted, non-void accounting entries"). Drafts, voided and deleted entries are ignored.
• Only the budget's accounts, dated between its start and end dates, and — if a project dimension is set — only lines tagged with that project.
• Amounts use the base-currency value of each line ("Comparable totals in the organization base currency").
• Sign follows the account type: for expense and asset accounts, actual = debits − credits; for income, liability and equity accounts, actual = credits − debits.
• Actuals are grouped by calendar month of the entry date and matched to the budget column that starts in that month.

How overlapping budgets are de-duplicated

You can have several budgets that cover the same account and dates (e.g. a company-wide budget and a department budget). Since 30 September 2026:

• Each budget's own Budget vs Actual still shows the full actuals for its scope — a journal line appears in every budget that covers it.
• The Budget utilization total on the Accounting Budgets page counts each posted journal line once, even if it matches two or more budgets. The portfolio total is computed over the union of all budgets' scopes, not by adding up each budget's actual.
• Only accrual-basis budgets are included in the portfolio total.

Worked example (AED)

Al Noor Trading LLC creates "2026 Operating Budget": 1 Jan – 31 Dec 2026, Monthly, Accrual, Active. It selects 6100 Marketing and 4000 Sales and enters AED 5,000 per month for marketing and AED 120,000 per month for sales, using Copy first period.

Posted activity:

Budget vs Actual for 6100 Marketing:

The February draft bill is ignored until it is posted. (The budget itself posts nothing — there is no budget journal.)

Al Noor also creates "Q1 Marketing Push" (Custom, 1 Jan – 31 Mar 2026, 6100 Marketing, AED 12,000). Its own Budget vs Actual shows the same 9,800.00 of actuals. On the Accounting Budgets page, Budget utilization counts the marketing lines once: planned 1,512,000.00 (both budgets), but actual includes the 9,800.00 only once — not 19,600.00.

Budget reports

Reports → Budgets:

The budget picker in the filter bar of these reports now keeps a fixed width (about 220 px, full width on a phone), so the filter row no longer jumps while the budget list loads, and the compact sidebar drawer opens below the top bar instead of covering it.

Permissions

Ask your workspace owner or administrator if a button is missing. Actions use the shared confirmation dialogs and outcome notices; if an outcome is uncertain, refresh the budget before saving again.

Tips and common problems

• "Cash-basis budget actuals need payment allocation mapping and are not enabled for finance budgets yet. Use accrual basis for this report." Cash-basis budgets cannot show actuals yet. Change the basis to Accrual.
• Use Monthly period type for variance. Actuals are matched by calendar month to the column starting in that month, so Monthly budgets give the clearest variance.
• Actual looks too low. Check for unposted drafts, entries dated outside the budget's start/end dates, or a project dimension that filters lines out.
• Project job budgets are separate. Labour, materials and other job costs belong in Project Budget Control inside each project, not in an accounting budget.
• Don't keep editing the plan to match actuals — the variance then tells you nothing. Duplicate to make a revised version instead.

Related

• Chart of accounts — the accounts you budget.
• Journal entries — only posted entries count as actuals.
• Fiscal years and lock dates — fiscal years and periods.
• Projects & Finance and Project profitability — project budgets and results.
• Reports — the Budgets report group.