Sub Budget
Create Sub Budget carves a smaller, self-contained budget out of the one you have open — pick the accounts and budget elements you want to carry over, and Line Budgeter builds a brand-new budget file from them. The original budget is never touched.
A sub budget is a one-time extraction, not a live link: once created, it's an ordinary, fully independent budget. Changes in the parent don't flow into the sub budget, and the sub budget's totals don't roll back up into the parent. Use it to hand a department its own slice of the budget, build a "what stays" scenario, or spin off a unit budget you'll develop separately.
Creating a sub budget
Open the budget you want to extract from, then choose Budget → Create Sub Budget. It works from any level — Topsheet, Account, or Line Item Details — and always operates on the whole budget, not just your selection.
The Create Sub Budget dialog has three columns:
- Category — the kinds of things you can include: Account(s), Currency, Locations, Line Types, Phases, Day Types, Company Units, Budget Units, Tax & Fringe, Incentives, Universals, Tags, and Episodes. Everything starts checked, so by default you'd get a full copy — uncheck what you want to leave behind. Select All / Unselect All apply to the category you're currently viewing.
- The checklist — under Account(s), majors expand to show their sub-accounts; checking or unchecking a major cascades to everything beneath it. A few boxes can't be uncleared: the default day type is always included, and Locations, Episodes, and Currencies must each keep at least one item.
- Presets — save a selection you use repeatedly (up to 10 per budget). Add creates one ("Preset 1", "Preset 2", …; double-click to rename), and each preset's menu offers Update Preset, Reset Preset, and Delete. Sub budget presets are separate from Filter Budget presets.
RESET returns every category to its starting state; CREATE builds the budget.
What comes over
Everything you checked: the selected majors and sub-accounts with their line items, plus the selected currencies, fringes, incentives, universals, tags, locations, phases, day types, units, episodes — along with budget preferences, calendar data, and formulas. A detail line makes the cut only if its account and its location, phase, and day type are all among your selections (lines with none of those assigned always qualify). Production totals and the summary rows carry over automatically.
If the currency you excluded was the primary one, the first remaining currency is promoted to primary so the new budget always has one.
Where it lands
The new budget is named {Budget Name}_SUBBUDGET_{date} (with _2, _3… appended if that name is taken) and is saved into the same project folder as the original — except when the source is a workspace shared budget, in which case it's placed in a new folder ("New Project Folder 1"). It opens immediately in a new tab alongside the parent, and you'll see its totals settle a moment after it opens as everything recalculates for the reduced account set.
From then on it's just another budget in your library: rename it, share it, export it, print it, even create a sub budget from it — all the normal rules apply.
When Create Sub Budget is unavailable
- Goalpost budgets and the sample budget — the menu item is disabled.
- View-only access — guests see "You do not have access to create sub budget."
- Plan limits — a sub budget counts as a new budget, so you need a free slot under your plan's Active Budgets limit.
- Shared budgets — creating from a shared budget is allowed; the resulting sub budget is your own private budget, not shared.
Works offline, too — the sub budget is written locally first and syncs when you reconnect.