 But if I did that I would need this to be an absolute reference So I could double-click on that and say okay If I make this an absolute reference by selecting f4 on the keyboard Then I could copy it. I could copy it out this way and then I could do that I could do that for each of them. So for example if I went through and I made all of these If I made all of these f4 Then I could copy it out to the right. That's one way that we could do it We could also use a mixed reference so I could say if I look at what the absolute reference is doing here We've got a dollar sign before the B a dollar sign before the two and what stats doing in total is saying no matter Where I move this thing whether I move it down or to the right I want you to keep the same reference at that 200 for B2 now specifically the B Means that I want you to keep the column B and the two means that I want you to keep the column two So if I'm gonna say over it I would like to be able to copy it down and when I copy it down I would like the two to be able to move down. However, I don't want the B To be to be moving. I want you to keep in column B So what I'm gonna do is just say I'm gonna remove the dollar sign before the two This is a mixed reference So it's not gonna move the column to the right, but it will move the the rows as I go down So that's another way we can do it if I just copy it down a few times to double check it It works that way and it works This way as well, right so I could copy it all the way kind of across and that will work So that's another method that we could use now The method I like to use for this particular purpose is I'm gonna delete this is to just to go to the tab to the right And I'm gonna say this equals the prior period because I want it to be the same all the way across and now if I copy that across It'll just everything will be equal to the prior period the reason I think that's useful for a budget is because if I had some system where I'm gonna say I want March to change Then April will be dependent on March's change and everything will cascade Changing going out into the future. So I think that's the the best method to use or that's the one We're gonna use here at least and so once I do that January is pulling from the source data everything else is pulling from the prior period I could copy that both down putting my cursor on the fill handle copying it all the way down and Once I've copied all the way down I could copy it all the way across right or I could do it all the way across first and then copy all the way down I can't see how far up the total is from December almost there So now I'm just gonna copy the whole thing over boom So there we have it. So we've nicely made this this kind of just generic This generic budget and if you had no other information and like and you wanted to give someone like a generic budget Based on the prior year. This is what you could do, right? You could just basically do that and you have some settings Possibly in QuickBooks they can kind of possibly do that kind of automatically for you So you could you could do that although again, if you just use last year's data You're just running a prior year versus the current year comparative report, which you can do anyways Using comparative reports. So now the question is generally well, what am I gonna do from this point to change it? Based on our projections going forward. So I'm gonna make the first column a little bit smaller. I'm gonna save this And let's let's make this green to show that it's our source data. So I'm gonna make it a different color Just to show that that's my source data and I'll put some brackets around it. Maybe Okay, so now let's go through here basically line by line and think about what changes might happen from each line And we'll make some tweaks to it and actually before we do that Let's total it up down below. So yeah, we've got the total down here But notice I copied it all the way down to the total I don't want the total calculated this way. I want the total to be summed up This way so I'm gonna sum up the total like that and then copy it to the right So it sums it up. We might want to put an underline under this so it will emphasize that Maybe I put an underline Under this and then I'm gonna put a total column to the right which will sum up the entire year So I'm gonna say total Total or year-to-date or whatever you want to call it I'm gonna copy the formatting here home tap format painter copy the formatting and Summit up equals the SUM one of the most famous or the most famous forms you lie Summit up January through December Then I can copy that down putting my cursor on the fill handle to copy that down And then I'll put an underline under this one again and copy this to the right So there's our year-to-date Amount or a total for the entire year amount Sometimes they put that total by the way up front at the beginning So sometimes you might want to put the total at the beginning, but whatever there it is