The first step in the budgeting process is creating a chart of accounts for the next fiscal year. The chart of accounts is created using the Create New Fiscal Year process (GL> Utilities> Create New Fiscal Year). This process will copy the chart of accounts of the current fiscal year to the next fiscal year.
After the chart of accounts has been created you can generate a budget using a budgeting process:
- Extended Budgeting
- Budget Adjustments
- MS Excel - Export and Import budget amounts
- Edit New Year Budgets
Extended Budgeting
The Extended Budgeting module is a comprehensive tool used to generate a requested, proposed, approved or adopted budget. The Extended Budgeting process allows you to track budget revisions, add attachments such as budget documents to the budget amounts, group general ledger accounts in order to create budgets for department heads, create and document budget adjustments and create period budgets.
Budgeted amounts can also be imported from and exported to Microsoft Excel, which allows you to manipulate the budgets in a spreadsheet and then import the budget amounts back into the Extended Budgeting process.
Click here for information on Extended Budgeting.
Budget Adjustments
The Budget Adjustments process (GL> Budget Adjustments) is used to adjust the budget of the current fiscal year. Budget Adjustments will display on the adjusted GL accounts on the Budget tab of the Chart of Accounts Maintenance window (GL> Maintenance> Chart of Accounts> Budget tab> Budget Adjustments section).
If you have the Purchase Order module, the Roll Over POs process (PO> Roll Over POs) can be used to create budget adjustments for the amount of the rolled over purchase orders. The budget adjustments created by the Roll Over POs process will increase the budget on the GL accounts attached to the purchase order line items being rolled over.
Click here for information on budget adjustments.
Click here for information on the Budget Adjustment Report.
MS Excel – Export and Import budget amounts
The Export Budget Analysis processes (GL> New Budget Information> Export Budget Analysis) can be used to export budgeted amounts to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The budget amounts can then be modified in the MS Excel spreadsheet and then imported back into the application using the Import Budget from Excel process (GL> New Budget Information> Import Budget from Excel). This can also be done in the Extended Budgeting process (GL> Extended Budgeting).
Click here for information on the Export Budget Analysis feature.
Click here for information on importing a budget from an MS Excel spreadsheet.
Edit New Year Budgets
The Edit New Year Budgets tool (GL> New Budget Info> Edit New Year Budgets) allows you to modify the requested, proposed, approved and adopted budget amounts of the next fiscal year. You can manually change the budget amounts for each GL account or apply a percentage increase to a filtered group of budgeted GL accounts.
Click here for information about the Edit New Year Budgets process.
Types of budgets
When generating a budget, be aware there are five different budget types: requested, proposed, approved, adopted and current budget. Each budget type represents a unique budget amount and can be used to record and track the changes that are made to the budget as it moves from the early budgeting stages (requested or proposed) to an adopted budget (adopted), and to the budget of the current fiscal year (current budget).
If you are going to use all of the budget types, you can generate a budget for the requested, proposed, approved and adopted budget types using one of the budgeting tools in the General Ledger module. When the fiscal year is rolled over at the end of the fiscal year, the Fiscal Year End Reset process (GL> Utilities> Fiscal Year End Reset) will copy the adopted budget amounts to the current budget amounts of the current fiscal year. The current budget amounts will then display on the Budget field on the Chart of Accounts Maintenance window (GL> Maintenance> Chart of Accounts) for the budgeted GL accounts of the new fiscal year.
You do not have to use every budget type (requests, proposed, approved, adopted) when generating a budget. If you do not want to use all of the budget types, generate your budget amounts in the adopted budget type so that when the Fiscal Year End Reset process (GL> Utilities> Fiscal Year End Reset) is run the budgeted amounts will be implemented in the new fiscal year. You can also generate a budget amount in a budget type and then use the Copy Budget Information process (GL> New Budget Information> Copy Budget Info) to copy the budget amounts from one budget type to the next. For example, you can generate a budget in the approved budget type and then copy the budget amounts to the adopted budget type where it will be copied to the current budget amounts when the Fiscal Year End Reset process is run.
If you are creating a budget for the current year midway through the current fiscal year and would like to copy the adopted budget to the current budget, turn the fiscal year back to a previous fiscal year (SS> Utilities> System Setup> Organization tab> Fiscal Year field) and run the Fiscal Year End Reset process. This will copy the adopted budget type to the current budget of the current fiscal year. After the Fiscal Year End Reset process has been run, change the fiscal year back to the current fiscal year (SS> Utilities> System Setup> Organization tab> Fiscal Year field). You can also create budget adjustments (GL> Budget Adjustments) to create the budget amounts for each of the GL accounts since budget adjustments are adjustments to the current budget amount.