The business budget is a monthly plan for the business on its own. It lives on the Budget tab of the Business page and never mixes with your personal budget. Included with Thrive and Thrive Duo.
Start a business budget
Open the Budget tab
On the Business page, choose Budget, then Start a business budget.
Set a revenue target
Under Revenue target, a month, choose Average month, Lowest month (a careful target) or My own figure. The first two come from your last few months of sales; with no sales history yet, type your own figure.
Set your pay
Your pay, a month is what you take out of the business for yourself. It's never counted as a business cost.
Save
You can change it any time with Edit the plan.
A budget for each kind of cost
Costs by line shows what each tax line has cost this month against its budget, and what it usually comes to. Lines you've spent on without a budget are listed under No budget yet.
- Tap a line to set its Monthly budget, or choose Remove to take the budget off.
- Choose Add a budget for a line you expect to spend on.
- Usually is an average of the last three months (fewer if your business money started more recently), counting months with nothing spent, so a cost you paid once isn't treated as a monthly one.
Costs, not deductions
The budget tracks what things cost the business, not what goes on the tax return.
- A $100 client lunch counts $100 against your meals budget, even though only half of it is deductible.
- If you're registered for GST/HST, a cost counts without the tax you claim back.
- For a part-business cost, only the business share counts.
- Costs without a tax line yet, and capital purchases, aren't counted in the budget.
Reading the month
The top of the tab shows Revenue, Costs, Profit and Your pay against the plan, with one sentence on what the plan leaves in the business. If you gave a share under Set aside for income tax in Settings, the plan also sets that aside from the profit.
Use the month arrows to look at earlier months. During the current month, each line's bar shows whether spending is on pace for its budget.
Your personal budget
Business money stays out of your personal budget: everything on business accounts, and anything you mark as business. For a part-business cost, your personal budget counts only your share. If you switch Budgets to the business view, it explains that budgets follow your personal money.