Budgeting by Department, Project or Cost Center

Beyond a Single Company-Wide Budget

Because each budget line can carry an Analytic Account, you can run several parallel budgets scoped to whatever you track analytically — departments, projects, cost centers, or product lines (see the Accounting course's analytic accounting coverage).

Typical Setups

• One budget per department – each department head owns and is measured against their own budget lines.
• One budget per project – planned vs actual cost for a specific client project, feeding project profitability alongside the Projects course's own profitability report.
• Consolidated view – a company-wide budget with lines split by analytic account still rolls up to one overall Budget vs Actual total when you need the big picture.

Make sure every relevant journal entry (bills, expenses, timesheets) is actually tagged with the right analytic account at entry time — a budget can only track what's tagged; untagged transactions silently fall outside every departmental/project budget while still hitting the company total.