Budgets

Budgets let you plan revenue and spending account-by-account across a fiscal period, then compare actual results to your plan to track variances and stay on target. Enter amounts month-by-month, auto-fill them with an AI forecast, and review budget-vs-actual whenever you need it. It's a core tool for financial planning and client advisory.

Key capabilities

• Create budgets with a name, fiscal year, start/end dates, and a monthly / quarterly / annual period type
• Per-account line items with an editable amount for each month in the period
• Budget vs Actual report — budgeted, actual, $ variance, and % variance by account, with totals
• AI Forecast to auto-populate revenue and expense lines from projected activity
• Model Scenario to turn a budget into a Budget Projection scenario (and jump back to the projection)
• Lifecycle states — Draft, Active, Archived — with one-click activate
• Duplicate a budget to start next period from an existing plan
• Search, status filter pills, and pagination across budgets
• Budgets created from a projection are badged Generated from Projection and link back to their scenario
• Total budgeted revenue + expenses shown per budget in the list

How it works

You set planned amounts per account per month; DayZero compares them against actuals from your ledgers to surface the variance for each account.

flowchart TD
  create["Create budget (period + dates)"] --> lines["Add line items per account"]
  lines --> fill{"Enter how?"}
  fill -->|"Manual"| manual["Type monthly amounts"]
  fill -->|"AI Forecast"| ai["Auto-fill from projection"]
  manual --> compare["Compare to actuals"]
  ai --> compare
  compare --> variance["Variance ($ and %) by account"]

How to use it

1. Open Budgets (/books/budgets) and click New Budget. Enter a name, start and end dates, and a period type — the fiscal year is taken from the start date.
2. Open the budget and click Add Line to pick an account and enter an amount for each month in the period.
3. Click AI Forecast to auto-populate revenue and expense lines from projected activity, then adjust any cells.
4. Click vs Actual to see budgeted vs. actual with $ and % variance per account and a totals row.
5. Use Activate to promote a draft to active, Duplicate to copy it for another period, or Delete to remove it.
6. Click Model Scenario to generate a Budget Projection scenario from the budget for what-if planning.

Pro tips

• Start from last year as a baseline by duplicating a prior budget, then adjust — faster than building from zero.
• Use AI Forecast for a first draft, then refine the accounts you have strong opinions about — it only fills months that fall inside the budget period.
• Review vs Actual monthly with clients to catch overspending before it compounds; positive variance means under budget, negative means over.
• Keep one Active budget per period and Archive old ones so the list stays focused.
• For deeper what-if modeling (growth, hiring, scenarios), push a budget into Budget Projection with Model Scenario rather than editing cells by hand.

In-depth guide

Budget structure and lifecycle

A budget has a name, fiscal year, start/end dates, and period type, plus a status that controls how it's used.

Two views render the budget:

• Detail view — one row per account, with a Total column and a column for each month between the start and end dates.
• List view — each budget's status, period type, total budgeted (revenue + expenses), and date range.

Line items and amounts

• Structure — each line item ties an account to a set of monthly amounts.
• Totals — a line's total is the sum of its monthly amounts, and the budget total is the sum across lines.
• Editable — lines can be edited or deleted at any time.

Budget vs Actual

The vs-Actual report compares your plan to ledger actuals for the current year-to-date window and lists each account's budgeted amount, actual amount, variance, and variance percentage, with a totals row.

AI forecast and scenario modeling

• AI Forecast — generates forecasted revenue and expense lines and writes the projected amounts into the budget's months. Only periods inside the budget window are applied; existing lines are updated and new accounts are created.
• Model Scenario — creates a Budget Projection scenario from the budget and opens the projection workspace.
• Generated from Projection — budgets that originated from a projection display this badge with a link back to the source scenario.

Start free and plan the year with confidence.