Hello, Our Company is in the process of enhancing our bookkeeping and
Quarterly Projections of Balance Sheet
Answers
While not a QB expert, you have the ability to enter in budgets. Set them up (you may be able to set-up multiple budgets) and then use the report actual vs budget.
A quick look on their support page will help.
There is a software application titled Budget Maestro from Centage Corporation (www.centage.com) that can be easily linked to Quick Books and serve as an extension of your QuickBooks general ledger. It will provide you with future or projected financial statements including an income statement, a balance sheet and even a statement of cash flows. This is all accomplished without any user programming or formula work. It uses the budget information you provide in the application and outputs the forecasted reports you need.
While I can appreciate you wanting to automate or track projections and quickbooks seems a natural aid, I personally encourage you to consider staying within EXCEL for this. I believe going into your system to put budgets and forecasts is most valuable when the user of the financial statement needs to compare actual results to the projection. My guess your organization is still on the smaller side and the flexibility of EXCEL may be adequate or preferred by the user. Regarding balance sheet projections, I have never used any system besides EXCEL or Lotus to calculate projected balance sheets. I have then inputted these amount into the applicable general ledger package. I have found that the vast majority of the value in a projected balance sheet is to forecast cash balances, especially for earlier stage companies. Varying the assumptions regarding cash is much easier to calculate in EXCEL and then review by
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I also agree with Jack. I find the functionality of Excel provides the quickest and easiest method to provide budget vs. actual for the P&L, Balance Sheet and cash flow. You can tailor the modeling for your Balance sheet forecast for each major line item including DSO for A/R, DPO for A/P, Fixed Asset additions and depreciation for the BS, P&L and Cash Flow. If set up correctly using assumption drivers you can look at different scenarios for changes in DSO, DPO etc.
I agree with Jack.
I also agree with Jack and David that Excel works well. My experience has been that you can more easily drop in your assumptions that drive your predictions of balance sheet line items (i.e. DSO assumption to derive your receivables balance) and you can make it as easy or complex, high-level or detailed as you need. You can also then create a cash flow statement/plan and expand into analytics/metrics allowing for more focused management of the information.
Anon,
I have used the budgeting in QBs and it's pretty simple and they provide a couple different reports you can view after you input it. I don't think it would take a lot of additional education on your part; that is one of the benefits of QB's. Intuit also has a great community site with help guides to everything. There are also forecasting reports in QBs that may be helpful to you as well.
Excel is a great tool; I also use it a lot; I don't think it would hurt you to spend a little time checking out the functions within the software I mention. Feel free to PM me if you have specific questions. I may be able to assist.
I used Excel for P&L budgeting and it is adequate. I wouldn't recommend it as a forecasting tool though. I've did all my financial modeling in Excel because of budget and time constraints. If you want to use a packaged solution to forecast all three statements you should consider PlanGuru in addition to Budget Maestro as this is a capability they promote. It's also a more affordable solution for small QBs users.
We can use Macros and do a rolling forecast .It is better not to waste time in inputting budgets in accts package as it is only history.If the package allows to capture forecast and all variables,it is fine.
Use Excel-based modeling while the variables are still up in the air.
Once the company has settled on a budget, then either enter it into QuickBooks so you can have the BvA reports or build a tool in your model to produce a Projection vs. Actual report with reports exported from Excel.
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