Xero Budget Manager & Beyond

Xero has in built budgeting features in Xero Budget Manager which can be accessed in any subscription. It allows you to quickly create budgets and compare them against actual performance. You can manually enter amounts into each column and row or there is a formula box to apply a fixed amount to each month. For those that use tracking in Xero you can setup more than one budget and set them up to relate to a single tracking category.

Once the budget is entered into the budget manager there are several premade reports that you can use.

Budget summary – gives a printable version of the budget you have created

Budget variance report – this is a customisable report which shows the budget and actuals for the period, as well as the variance in dollars and percentage.

Beyond integrates with Xero and is a real time budgeting platform that allows employees to only see what is relevant to them. Projects and budgets can be easily tracked without using complex spreadsheets.

All figures are based on live data so allows for your business to create and update your business’s future plans. This helps to reduce the information gap and allows budgets to be flexible and not based on outdated data.

Beyond allows budgets to be created in many ways including top-down and bottom-up. It is also able to sync multiple companies or multiple accounting systems into Beyond.

A live snapshot of all budgets can be viewed in the Breakdown Report. Explore the details of your business in the Budget Explorer report or track historical data against future projections in the Business Tracker.

Beyond has a 30 day free trial which allows you to try all the features before deciding that it is the right budgeting app for you.

Budgets are not static, they develop and change over time. Re-visiting your budget on a regularly allows you to adjust it accordingly and the more accurate your budget will become overtime. Using an app whether it is the basic budgeting version available in Xero or a more advanced app that provides easy to read graphs can help improve your business finances.