Budget based on less than 1 year of data [Edited]

foxzanda

Currently, no matter what settings you select when creating a budget, the numbers are calculated based on 12 months of data. You select 2 months in the past as a "start date" but it still uses 12 months of data to generate the numbers. This is very frustrating to customers who have incomplete data over the last year or have had life events happen in the last 12 months that would affect finances

UKR

Despite having several years worth of data already in my data file, the last time I revamped my budget I did the following:

• Select the Budget's Annual View (requires Quicken Deluxe or higher feature level)
• In the Budget column for the month of January of this year I edited every category's budget number … one at a time … and inserted my monthly budget amount, trying as hard as I could to keep expenses below income 😉
• After I was done and had reviewed the numbers one last time I clicked on the January column header (notice the little triangle in each monthly column?) and selected "Copy Jan budgets to all future months in 20xx" from the popup.
• Now I had an initial budget for the year.

You can do the same with any month of the year, if you have to redo your budget in midyear. Just set up the new budget amounts for the month where you want to make the change, then copy forward the selected month's numbers to all future months for the rest of the year.