Get better insights into your business

[Erik_V]

Budget for success and compare your performance through simple-to-read profit & loss reports and graphs.

Working with budgets

First, you’ll want to set some goals by creating a budget – and getting started is easy.

You can create a budget for any period length (even across multiple financial years!), and you can create as many budgets as you need.

Entering your budget is a breeze. If you’ve been using Essentials for a while, you can import your totals from last year.

You can even export to Excel, work with your budget, and import back into Essentials with ease.

New Profit & Loss reporting and graphs

But what good is a budget if you can’t compare it to your business’s performance? The new Profit & Loss report makes it easy to track your financials against your budget or last year’s actuals.

Get the data you want by choosing whether you want to compare to your budget, last year’s actuals, or both.

Now’s the fun part – choosing how you want to display your data. The tabled report makes it easy to gauge your performance at a glance – showing your variance for each period.

If you're looking for a more visual comparison, choose the bar graph...

Or line graph display.

To find the data that’s right for you, make a comparison between two or more categories by clicking the + Add Item button.

To dig deeper into your graphs, hover over your bars or line points to see the dollar values for each category.

What does "Beta" mean?

Any feature that has a Beta tag simply means we’ll continue building upon and improving your experience, based on your feedback. So let us know what you like and dislike by clicking "Let us know" at the top of your budget and Profit & Loss Beta pages.

[AlanT]

@Erik_V

Hi Erik,

Thanks for the update.  I saw this last night and started to play with it.  It looks to be quite comprehensive however I came undone when I tried to Export the figures to Excel and then import them into a new budget.

If there is an error in the file that you are importing into a budget, you get a message that there is an error, but absolutely no assistance as to what the error is or where in the file.  This makes the error useless.  But it is typical of all Essential error messages.

I then tried exporting a CSV file and without opening it or changing it I imported it and still got an error message.

:-(

When you have prior year comparatives, the report is too complicated.  It is nice to have the variance column, but having the variance % just clutters the screen.  Could this column be optional?

If you are to have a % column, it would be of more help if each line was a % of the sales or total income.  As the ATO publish statistics for different industries and business owners need to be aware of their costs vs income, it would be a more useful comparison than just a % change.

I would like to be able to see just This Year, Last Year and Variance columns as an option for financial reporting as well as managment reports.

Thanks,

Alan

[AlanT]

Hi Again,

I assume there will be an option to export the data to Excel or generate a PDF so that we can print the report?

Alan

[Erik_V]

Hi @AlanT,

Thank you for the great feedback. Have you checked out our help page on importing budgets? It has some helpful tips on importing a CSV into your Essentials budget.

Because this is a beta we look to continually improve these features based on feedback like yours. If you haven't already, it would help us if you click the "Let us know" link at the top of the budget and profit & loss beta pages.

Erik

[AlanT]

@Erik_V

Hi Erik,

That option does not appear on the released version that I can see.

Are you able to call me?  I'll drop my number to you in a PM if that helps.

Alan