Budgets in Float are like placeholders for cash that might come into or leave the business, allowing you to build up a picture of how the future might look.
Your forecast is built with the budgets that you enter and each day Float updates itself and pulls in the latest transactions from your accounting software, which slowly fill up your budgets. Once an actual becomes larger than the budget, Float will use the actual amount instead. At the end of the current month, all actuals will be used instead of budgets, ensuring your forecast is as accurate as possible.
The following steps show how to create a budget within Float.
To start click into a cash flow cell for the relevant account, selecting the ‘Create budget’ option from the modal that displays.
Clicking ‘Create budget’ will bring up the options for setting the budget. Here you will set:
- A budget name
- The frequency with which the budget occurs
- Budget start and end date
- Budget amount, either fixed or increasing/decreasing
In the budget occurs field are the following options:
- Once
- Every week
- Every 2 weeks
- Every month
- Every quarter
- Every year
If choosing ‘Once’ the budget will occur one time in the cash flow, on the date specified. However, each of the other options will repeat on the chosen frequency between the start and end date.
The start and end date will allow you to customise when the budget impacts the cash flow, for example, if a budget were to only run for 6 months this can be achieved through setting the start and end date.
When entering an amount, Float is able to suggest budgets, based on the historical data that has been synced. These suggestions can also be updated or changed at any point.
You can find out more about setting a budget based on historic averages here
Alternatively, you have the option to enter a budget that increases or decreases with each occurrence. This can be by a set amount or percentage.
Once you’re happy with the options, select save and the budget will be added to the cash flow.
To see a step by step guide on how to set an increasing/decreasing budget click here.
You can find out how to edit budgets here: