Archiving Budgets and the Archived Section

Archiving retires a budget without deleting its data. This article covers both places you can archive from, the extra warning you'll see when archiving the currently active budget, and how archived budgets behave afterward.

You need Full Access permission to archive. See Budgets: Overview for the full permission breakdown.

Two ways to archive

You can archive a budget from either of these places:

1. The row's kebab menu - click the three-dot icon on any budget row in the Budget list and choose Archive. See How to duplicate, rename, archive, or delete a budget for the full kebab menu walkthrough.
2. The editor toolbar - open the budget in the full-page editor and click Archive in the toolbar.

Both paths open the same confirmation dialog.

The extra warning for the active budget

If the budget you are archiving is currently Active, the confirmation dialog shows an additional warning above the standard one: archiving it will leave the property with no active budget for that fiscal year until you activate a replacement. Review this warning carefully before confirming - your Budget vs Actual view and AI forecast for that fiscal year will have nothing driving them until a new budget is activated.

If the budget is a Draft, only the standard warning appears (no active-budget warning, since a Draft was never live).

What happens after archiving

Once confirmed:

• The budget's status changes to Archived.
• It disappears from the main Budget list and from the fiscal-year selector used elsewhere in Accounting.
• It moves into the collapsible Archived section at the bottom of the Budget list.
• All historical data - amounts, groups, reallocations, and performance history - is preserved and remains viewable.

The Archived section

The Budget list has a collapsible Archived section below the working budgets table, showing a count of how many archived budgets exist. Click the section header to expand or collapse it.

Archived budgets in this section show their name, status, and fiscal year, and offer a View action instead of Edit or Continue editing.

Archived budgets are read-only

Opening an archived budget always opens it in View only mode. A banner at the top of the editor confirms the budget is archived and that values are shown for reference only. You cannot edit amounts, add or remove accounts, or reactivate it directly - to bring a fiscal year's plan back into active use, create a new budget (or duplicate the archived one, see How to duplicate, rename, archive, or delete a budget) and activate that instead.

Related articles

• How to duplicate, rename, archive, or delete a budget
• How to make a new budget when one is already active
• The Full-Page Budget Editor