Computerized Farm Record Keeping with Quicken® 2003

Bulletin 908

Budgets

Using Quicken to keep your farm records makes record keeping easier. It also allows you to make more use of your record data than you might with a hand-kept set of records. Using the budgeting feature in Quicken to create and monitor projected income and expenses allows you to use your computer records for more than just tax purposes. By creating budget projections and examining projected versus actual income and expenses on a monthly or quarterly basis, you will know how your business is doing financially and can quickly take needed corrective action. It is too late to take action if you wait until the end of the year to find out that your farm business did not do as well financially as you had planned.

Budgets can be based on the previous year's income and expense records, but need to be adjusted for any changes in the operations and for price changes for products bought or sold.

Within Quicken, budgets can be created by the following three different methods:

1. Automatic - Quicken creates a budget based on your existing data
2. Manual - Quicken creates a blank budget for you to fill in
3. Copy Current - Quicken copies your current budget for you to edit
   **NOTE** This option is only available after you have created your first budget.

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