Plan availability: budgets depend on your subscription. If you don't see Budgets in your menu or the Budgets report group, your plan may not include it — see Subscriptions & billing, or ask your workspace owner.
A budget sets your expected amounts per account for a period — monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Once a budget is in place, SolaBooks compares it against your actual posted figures, so you can see exactly where you are over- or under-spending without building spreadsheets.
When to use it
- You plan income and spending for the year and want variance tracked automatically.
- You want early warning when an expense account approaches its limit.
- You budget individual jobs — that's a project budget, tracked against project actuals (see Projects & Finance).
Before you start
- Your Chart of Accounts should be settled — budgets are entered per account.
- The fiscal year you're budgeting must exist.
- Decide the granularity up front: a monthly budget gives monthly variance; a yearly budget only tells you where you stand against the annual total.
Step by step
Create a budget
- Open the Budgets page and click New Finance Budget (a separate New Project Budget button creates per-project budgets).
- Fill in the basics: Budget name, Fiscal year, Accounting period, Start date and End date.
- Pick the Period type — Monthly, Quarterly, Half yearly, Yearly, or Custom.
- Pick the Basis — Accrual or Cash — matching how you want actuals compared.
- Select the accounts to budget. Accounts are grouped by type (Income, Expense, Assets, Liabilities, Equity) with Select all / Clear buttons per group.
- Enter amounts in the Budget Grid — one column per period plus a Total. Copy first period fills every period with the first period's value (handy for even monthly budgets); Clear all starts over.
- Click Save Finance Budget.
A budget has a Status — Draft, Active, or Archived — so you can prepare next year's budget without it affecting current reporting.
Watch budget vs actual
Open a budget to see its Budget vs Actual view: headline tiles for Budget, Actual, Variance, and Remaining, plus counts of accounts that are Near Limit and Over Budget, and a Variance by Account and Period table underneath. Actuals are your posted figures — drafts never count.
Budget reports
The Budgets group under Reports contains:
| Report | Shows |
|---|---|
| Budget Summary | Roll-up of budget performance |
| Budget vs Actuals | Budgeted, actual, and variance per account |
| Budget Variance by Period | Variance trended across periods |
| Budget Variance by Account | Variance grouped by ledger account |
| Project Budget Control Report | Budget vs actual for project budgets |
All export to Excel like every other report.
Example
Sara at Al Noor Trading creates "2026 Operating Budget": fiscal year 2026, period type Monthly, basis Accrual. She selects her income and expense accounts, enters JOD 10,000 for January sales and JOD 6,000 for January costs, then uses Copy first period and tweaks the seasonal months by hand. By March, Budget vs Actuals shows marketing at JOD 950 actual against JOD 600 budget — flagged Over Budget — and she finds an annual subscription that should have been spread across the year.
Common mistakes
- Budgeting against draft numbers. Actuals are posted figures only. If variance looks too good, check for a backlog of unposted drafts.
- Wrong basis. An Accrual budget compared while you think in cash terms (or vice versa) makes variance meaningless. Pick the basis you actually manage by.
- One annual number when you wanted monthly control. Period type is set when the budget is created. For monthly variance, choose Monthly and spread the amounts.
- Editing the budget to "fix" variance. A budget is the plan. If the plan genuinely changed, update it — but don't chase actuals every month or the variance report tells you nothing.
- Project spending missing from a finance budget. Project budgets and finance budgets are separate. Use New Project Budget and the Project Budget Control Report for jobs.
Behaviour and rules
- Budgets never post. They are a planning overlay; only real transactions hit your accounts.
- Actuals are posted figures. Draft documents are excluded from variance.
- Per fiscal year. Each budget belongs to one fiscal year.
- If you can't create or edit budgets, ask your workspace administrator for access.
Related
- Chart of Accounts — budgets are entered per account.
- Reports — the Budgets report group.
- Projects & Finance, Project profitability — per-project budgets and results.
- Fiscal years and lock dates — the periods budgets are built on.
- Journal entries — only posted activity counts as actuals.