Budgets
From TrueERP wiki
Overview
Prior to creating a new budget you will need to create a new Budget Definition
A budget is a tool for creating a forecast for a business. Within a budget you can predict the outcome for specific areas of the company and track those predictions against actuals for any time period you choose. For more about time periods within budget refer to the new budget definitions. Budgets can be created on an account by account basis.
How to Create a New Budget
- Select the Budget button displayed within the Budget Tab
- The New Budget screen appears
- The Budget Name field is where you can trigger a drop down of all your current Budget definitions
- The Start Date field refers to the date at which this Budget becomes effective
- The End Date field refers to the date at which this Budget ceases to be in effect.
- The Interval field will display the interval chosen for this specific Budget based on what was loaded in during the
Budget definitions
- The Period refers to the increment of time that you have selected to build this budget on.
E.G - if you have chosen to set up a Budget on a monthly basis and the period reads '1' then you are about to set up the budget for the first month of your series of months.
- If you had selected that this will be a Quarterly Budget in your Budget definitions then this would be the first quarter
that you are about to set up.
- Budgets are set on an account by account basis. You may choose to set up a Budget that relates to one account
only - for example you may choose to setup a Budget that shows figures purely for the income generated from sales.
- More commonly - a Budget reports against multiple accounts. For example in addition to the budgeted figures
showing income generated from sales, you may also wish to report on the expenses that were incurred in generating those sales and how close to an anticipated budget you are.
- Select the Account orAccounts you wish to set up a Budget for from the drop down menu.
- To choose multiple accounts select the down arrow key to open a new line
- The tick box column labeled 'For Date', if selected will show the start date of the Budget in the budget date column.
This will also allow you to choose your own start date for this particular Budget.
- If this option 'For Date' is Not selected - then the setup for the Budget will be defaulted back to the date range that
you have initially selected through the Budget definition
- For more information on how to change these dates refer to date picker in Global features
- In your Budget definition there is the ability to select via a tick box which departments, or classes this particular
budget was referring to. As an example - you may be a national company, and wish to set individual budgets for all of the different branches of your company. Each one has a Budget for sales figures, expenses etc. by selecting the departments within your budget definition, you are able to create these individual forecasts or budgets.
- The All Classes columns will always appear - this will give you a total. For example - if you had set up budgets
for sales income across three departments, each for $/£1000 in this month - the figure that will appear in the 'All Classes' column will be $/£3,000.
- If you are creating a budget for multiple cost centres (departments or classes) you may find that the screen does
not fit all of them side by side. In this case it makes it difficult to remember, as you are filling in the details - exactly which account is on which line.
- In this circumstance - you may choose to tick the box labeled 'Freeze Account Name Column'. This will have the
effect of always displaying the account name column - enabling you to scroll to the right - across all of your departments whilst still maintaining the account name column for easy reference.
The aggressive and conservative columns are the labels entered in the Budget definition.
- These labels allow you enter varying boundaries for the Budget figures. They are not both compulsory - you may
choose to display only one figure.
- Should you choose to display both, you are able to have these flexible boundaries. For example - you may
choose as you are entering figures for your sales income that you need to have an aggressive and conservative figure. You may select that if the sales force are aggressive this month (or other time period that you have defined in your Budget definition) that they bring in $/£10,000. But conservatively they may only bring in $/£9,000.
- The same applies to expenses or any other accounts you set up within the Budget.
- For example the expense of advertising that we determine might come in conservatively at $/£1000 for this time period
(month). However if we are really aggressive at getting these totals down - we may be able to come in at $/£800
- The same in this example for travel expenses. Conservative estimates might look at $/£1500 this month, but if
we get aggressive in bringing this figure down - we may be able to come in at $/£1350.
- So therefore, Aggressive needs to be high for income and low for expenses. Conservative needs to be low for
income and high for expenses. good and bad of aggressive and conservative are reversed as we go through income and expense accounts.
- Aggressive income - it means more will come in. Aggressive expenses meaning that less goes out.
- Conservative income - it means less money coming in.Conservative expenses - it means more money going out.
- At this stage we have created entries for only one period
- In this example we have created Budget entries for the first month of a 12 month Budget reporting period.
- We can now translate this information to all other periods (the other 11 months) using the 'copy to all periods'
button.
- This will open the Budget Variation screen, specifically for the budget you are currently working on. (shown in the
highlighted circle)
- This feature will allow you to increase or decrease the entries in upcoming time periods by either percentage or dollar amounts.
- If you don't want to increase or decrease the figures - but maintain the same level across all periods, simply click
on the Copy button without entering a variation amount.
- For example you may choose that you are going to increase sales by 10 percent each month for the next 12
months.
- As you hit 'Copy' the program will then perform the calculation of a ten percent (compounding) increase and create
11 more entries for the Budget title.
N.B. The increase or decrease that has been selected will be performed for all accounts that this budget refers to.
For more information regarding the functionallity of lists see Global Features
- Once the calculation has been performed, the budget list screen will open automatically showing the entries that
have been created by the program.
- You can see the name of the Budget and description
- The names of the two variation columns (in this example aggressive and conservative)
- The Budget number showing the entries created for the time periods set up in the Budget definitions. In this example
12 entries - for twelve months
- And the start date and end date for each period that has been created.
- You can now alter or change any one of these periods by double clicking on your selection.
- You can now change or alter the figures for that particular month (or other time period as defined in your budget
definition)
- This allows you the flexibility to keep your Budget up-to-date, with any known or unusual circumstances. For
example you may know that in this particular month, you always have a quiet period, and therefore the sales figures will be down and so then will the expenses. You can change the figures by clicking into the field you wish to change and then selecting the save button.
- The show jobs tick box down the bottom left hand corner of the Budget screen gives you the ability to create
individual budgets for individual jobs that the company has on the go. This function MUST be selected at the beginning of creating a budget for a job that you have on the go.
- If this tick box is selected - ie you are creating a budget for a specific job. The job name column will appear
allowing you to choose the job name or number from the list.
- You can then set the Budget for the job by following the normal steps for creating a budget
IMPORTANT: ONCE THE BUDGET IS CREATED - CHANGES CAN NOT BE MADE TO THE BUDGET THROUGH THE BUDGET BUTTON. ALL CHANGES MUST BE MADE THROUGH THE BUDGET VARIATION BUTTON.
If a Budget is no longer relevant - all references to that particular budget can be made inactive through the budget definition list. Simply select the budget that is finished by double clicking the budget required from this list, and removing the tick from the active box (bottom right hand corner) by clicking on the tick once with the mouse.
