Prepaying an item in next year's budget
We are using QuickBooks Desktop edition for non-profits. Each fiscal year we have a set of projects (each of which is a class) that we budget for. But sometimes we need to make a payment before that -- e.g. we have a January 2026 event that we purchased items for in July 2026. I’d like to figure out how to enter this so that:
- Tax Report for 2026 shows the appropriate payment.
- Budget Report for 2027 shows the budget item against the correct class/project.
- Actual accounts can reconcile against statements
I’ve seen related suggestions (receiving dues for next year in December which involved setting up a holding account and doing the 2026 entries into that account, and then in January 2027 doing entries out of that account to the correct budget item. But I can’t figure out how to actually do that while achieving the three points above. Possibly I’m misunderstanding the exact sequence of entries and/or the holding account setup (expense or asset or liability account). But everything I’ve tried lets me achieve only 2 of the 3 goals above.
Is there a way to do what I want here?