Budgets Module
Budget vs. Actual
Set a spending or income target against a category or a project, and see it compared against your real records — pulled live every time you open the page, never typed in by hand.
Setting a budget
1Create a budget line
Click + New Budget at the top of the Budget Lines panel.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Budget Against | A Category or a Project — this choice can’t be changed later, see Changing a budgeted amount. |
| Type | Category budgets only. Expenses or Income — decides which side of your books the category name is matched against. |
| Category | Category budgets only. Start typing and pick from the suggestions: your own expense (or income) accounts and the categories you’ve already used. Accounts you wouldn’t budget against are left out: Cost of Goods Sold (it follows your sales), Sales Discounts, Merchandise Returns, stock adjustments and gains or losses on selling assets. Matching ignores capital letters and a trailing word like “Expense”, so “Rent” matches “Rent Expense” — but a different name altogether leaves Actual at 0. See How Actual is calculated. |
| Project | Project budgets only. Picked from your real Projects list for the active company. |
| Period | Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual. |
| Period Start | Any date inside the month, quarter, or year you’re budgeting for — it snaps to that period’s full first-to-last-day range automatically. |
| Budgeted Amount | Required, must be greater than zero. |
Click Create.
For a category budget, Actual only counts records dated inside the period you set. For a project budget, Actual is that project’s real total cost to date, pulled straight from Projects — Period Start only labels the line, it doesn’t limit which costs are included.
2Read the summary cards
| Card | What it’s measuring |
|---|---|
| Total Budgeted | Sum of every budget line’s Budgeted Amount, for the active company. |
| Total Actual | Sum of every line’s real Actual, computed the same way as each row. |
| % Used | Total Actual as a percentage of Total Budgeted, across all lines combined. |
| Over Budget | How many individual lines are currently Over Budget. |
These four cards sit above the Budget Lines table and always reflect every line you’ve created — there’s no filtering or date range to set.
3How Actual is calculated
Nothing about Actual, Remaining, or a line’s health is ever stored — all three are recalculated from your real records the moment you open Budgets, so they can never drift out of sync with what’s actually in your books.
For a category line, Actual is the real income or expense total for that category name (ignoring capital letters and a trailing “Expense”/”Income”), within the period’s date range — the same numbers Reports itself would show for that category and period.
For a project line, Actual is the project’s real total cost to date, from Projects’ own cost tracking — see the note above for why the period doesn’t narrow this one.
The Remaining column shows what’s left in plain words: “GHS 400.00 left” with the % used beneath it, or “GHS 50.00 over budget” in red once spending passes the target. For an income target it reads “to go” or “above target” instead. Health is derived from the two — see Budget health reference.
Common tasks
Changing a budgeted amount
Click the edit icon on a budget line’s row.
Once a budget line exists, Budget Against, Type, Category, Project, Period, and Period Start are all locked — the edit form shows them disabled. Only Budgeted Amount can actually be changed and saved. To retarget a line at a different category, project, or period, remove it and create a new one instead.
Removing a budget line
Click the delete icon on the row and confirm the prompt — there’s no undo after that. Removing a budget line only deletes the target you set; it never touches the real income, expense, or project records its Actual was calculated from.
Reference
Budget health reference
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On Track | Actual is under 85% of Budgeted. |
| At Risk | Actual has reached 85% of Budgeted, but hasn’t gone over. |
| Over Budget | Actual has passed 100% of Budgeted — or the line has a $0 budget and any Actual at all. |
What this module doesn’t do
A budget line isn’t linked to a category record — it’s matched by name against your accounts and categories (capital letters and a trailing “Expense” don’t matter). Pick from the suggestions: a typo or a different name means Actual quietly stays 0 instead of erroring.
A line crossing into At Risk or Over Budget only shows up the next time someone opens the Budgets page — it doesn’t fire a bell notification, email, or anything else on its own.
Projects already has its own per-project Budget/Spent tracking. A Budgets project line here sits alongside that, not in place of it — the two aren’t merged into one number.