Create a budget and compare it to actuals

Set a target for each income and expense account over a period, then open the budget to see actual spending, the variance and the percent used.

In the sidebar, open Bookkeeping, then Accounting, then Budgets. The page address is /bookkeeping/budgets. A new budget opens at /bookkeeping/budgets/new.

Before you start

• Run last year's Profit & Loss first so you have real numbers to plan from; see Run a financial report.
• Your role needs permission to create budgets. Editing, archiving and restoring each need their own permission.

Steps

1. Press New budget. The New budget window opens with one line.
2. Type a Name, for example 2026 Plan.
3. Set Period start and Period end, usually your fiscal year.
4. On each line, pick the income or expense Account and type the target amount for the whole period as a positive number, for both income and expenses. Press + line to add another account and Remove to drop one. If you pick the same account twice, the last amount wins.
5. Press Create budget. Nova shows Budget created. and the budget appears in the list with the status active.

What you see

• The list shows each budget's Name, Period and Status.
• Click a row, or choose Budget vs actual from its actions menu, to open the comparison. For each account it shows Budget, Actual posted so far in the period, the Variance and % of budget used. Variance is positive and green when you are doing better than plan (under budget on an expense, over plan on income) and red when worse.
• The Total row adds income and expense targets together, so its variance is not a profit figure; read the account rows instead.
• Actuals come from everything posted to those accounts in the period, counted when invoiced or billed: categorized bank lines, expenses, invoices and journal entries.

If something looks different

• New budget is missing: your role cannot create budgets.
• Create budget stays greyed out: the name, a start date, an end date, or at least one line with an account and an amount is missing.
• Targets need changing: choose Edit from the actions menu, adjust the amounts and press Save changes. Nova shows Budget updated. Only an active budget can be edited. The Account boxes in the Edit budget window look empty, but each line keeps its account unless you pick a new one.
• The year is over: choose Archive. You can add a reason, then press Archive budget. The budget and its comparison stay available for reference. Choose Restore to bring it back to the active list; that happens straight away.
• Filters narrows the list by Status to Active or Archived.

New budget