Forecasting Profits and Losses

If you’re using the Premier flavour of QuickBooks you can also prepare a forecast of a year’s profits (or losses). QuickBooks does this by calculating what your profit and loss statement will look like either based on the previous year’s income and expenses or based on using actual numbers that you enter very similar to how you budget. (See the previous section’s description of how to create a budget.)

To tell QuickBooks to forecast profits and losses, choose Company⇒Planning & Budgeting⇒Set Up Forecast. Then, when QuickBooks starts its clever little wizard, you follow the onscreen instructions. If you have questions, you can refer to the chapter’s earlier discussion of setting up a budget.

Just a thought: you may want to use your budget to plan conservatively, and your forecast for an optimistic scenario.