To answer your questions:

Australian Version
1.    I understand the budget reports are not available in the Australian version, however does the QODBC driver extract the budget data into any of the tables? No.
2.    Is there another product that you sell that does extract the budget information? No.
3.    Is it likely that budget information will be made available through the QODBC driver shortly? It's already available, however when QODBC calls the Australian version of QuickBooks, QuickBooks says it's not available.
4.    Is there some other way that this information could be extracted? Yes, you can export it directly out of the Australian version of QuickBooks.
 
USA Version
1.    In the USA version, where exactly is the budget information stored. ie in which table and does it have a distinguishing feature to identify it from say non-budget values? Budget information appears only in the form of Budget Reports (sp_report), it does not appear in any of the QODBC tables.
2.    Can the USA QOBDC driver be used on the Australian version of quickbooks so that the budget information can be extracted, or will it break other things? QODBC itself works with QuickBooks worldwide, the problem in Australia is that Quicken have left out the budget information in the SDK used by the Australian version of QuickBooks. It's a Quicken problem, not a QODBC problem.

Thanks so much for the info. It all makes sense now that you say its an issue with Quicken not the QOBDC. Thank you very much for clarifying.

Regards Nikki

For USA users of QuickBooks, QODBC has the same reports that can be found in QuickBooks:

BalanceSheetBudgetOverview

sp_report BalanceSheetBudgetOverview show Amount_Title, Label, Amount parameters FiscalYear = 2006, BudgetCriterion = 'Accounts', SummarizeBudgetColumnsBy = 'Date', SummarizeBudgetRowsBy = 'Account'

BalanceSheetBudgetVsActual

sp_report BalanceSheetBudgetVsActual show Amount_Title, Budget_Title, Difference_Title, Percent_Title, Text, Label, Amount, Budget, Difference, Percent parameters FiscalYear = 2006, BudgetCriterion = 'Accounts', SummarizeBudgetColumnsBy = 'Date', SummarizeBudgetRowsBy = 'Account'

ProfitAndLossBudgetOverview

sp_report ProfitAndLossBudgetOverview show Amount_Title, Text, Label, Amount parameters FiscalYear = 2006, BudgetCriterion = 'Accounts', SummarizeBudgetColumnsBy = 'Date', SummarizeBudgetRowsBy = 'Account'

ProfitAndLossBudgetPerformance

sp_report ProfitAndLossBudgetPerformance show Amount_Title, Text, Label, Amount parameters FiscalYear = 2006, BudgetCriterion = 'Accounts', SummarizeBudgetColumnsBy = 'Date', SummarizeBudgetRowsBy = 'Account'

ProfitAndLossBudgetVsActual

sp_report ProfitAndLossBudgetVsActual show Amount_Title, Budget_Title, Difference_Title, Percent_Title, Text, Label, Amount, Budget, Difference, Percent parameters FiscalYear = 2006, BudgetCriterion = 'Accounts', SummarizeBudgetColumnsBy = 'Date', SummarizeBudgetRowsBy = 'Account'

The parameters and filters that are available in a report can be found by running:

sp_paramters sp_reportname

So to report by customer (job) we do:

sp_report ProfitAndLossBudgetVsActual show Amount_Title, Budget_Title, Difference_Title, Percent_Title, Text, Label, Amount, Budget, Difference, Percent parameters FiscalYear = 2006, SummarizeBudgetColumnsBy = 'Customer'

To see how these stored procedures are used, see: How do I use the QuickBooks Reporting Engine with QODBC? I've heard something about sp_report ?