How do I create a budget?

Quicken automatically creates a budget based on your recurring expense categories. Afterwards, you can easily add or remove categories to more precisely match your needs.

Click the Planning tab.
Click the Budgets button.
Choose Budget Actions > Create new budget.
Type a budget name.
If necessary, change the Advanced Budget Settings.

Budget Year
You can define a fiscal year that begins on any month of the year. When you do so, any yearly or quarterly preferences in Quicken are offset based on the first month of your fiscal year.
For example, if your fiscal year started in April 2016, and it's now January 2017, select April in the Start budget on field. Quicken then considers April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2016, as last year.
To base Quicken's yearly or quarterly budget options on January 1 to December 31, select January in the Start budget on field.
Click OK to create your budget.
- The type of budget created
  Quicken creates a budget for all of your recurring personal expense categories. It does not include transfers or income categories in the budget. If you want, you can add transfers and income categories later by clicking Select Categories to Budget at the bottom of the Budget window.
- The date range used
  Quicken creates the budget based on transactions from the previous 12 full months. If you don't have 12 months of transactions yet, Quicken creates the budget based on as few as 3 months of transactions.
- The budgeting method used
  Quicken creates the budget based on your actual monthly expenses for prior months, and your average monthly expenses for current and future months.
- The rounding used
  Quicken rounds each budget amount to the nearest dollar.
- The accounts and categories used
  Quicken creates the budget based on personal expense transactions in all of your accounts except Invoice and *Sales Tax* accounts (Quicken Home & Business only).
  
  Quicken excludes the following categories from a budget when it is first created:
  Income categories
  Special investment and paycheck categories (usually preceded by an underscore character), such as "_401Contrib"
  The Interest Exp, Misc, and Not Sure categories
  Categories with the following tax line item assignments: Schedule A: Home mortgage interest, W-2: Federal tax withheld, W-2:Medicare tax withheld, W-2:Medicare tax withheld, W-2:Local tax withheld, W-2:Soc. Sec. tax withheld, and W-2:State tax withheld.
  After the budget has been created you can add categories and further customize it, as necessary.
Work with your budget in the Budget window.

Frequently asked questions

How do I copy my current budget to next year?

The first time you view a prior year's budget in a new year, Quicken asks you if you want to extend it to the new year. Just click OK and Quicken creates a new budget for you automatically, copying all of your current budget categories and budget values to the new budget.

If you want to get an early start

If you want to create next year's budget before the start of the new year, or if you want more control over how the budget is created:

Use the date control at the top of the budget window to change the year.
Quicken asks you how you want to create the new budget:
- Copy budget categories and budget values to the new budget
- Copy budget categories and actuals as budget values to the new budget
- Copy budget categories only to the new budget
Click OK to create the new budget.

Notes

Your new budget will report income and expense actuals based on transactions from the year it represents.
You can edit your new budget without affecting your previous budget.
You can change budget years using the date control at the top of the window.
You can create budgets for prior years.