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Budget Planning System Training Guide

Introduction

  • The Budget Planning System provides the mechanism to automatically create the labour portion of the budget using position management. Non-labour budgeting should transfer budget information from atrieveFinance or create budget transactions in batches within the Budget Planning System and update Budget GL account balances accordingly.  The.Budget Planning System provides a means for the user to estimate, calculate, and project on any number of possible budget scenarios to create another budget for any given year. This is accomplished without affecting any of the live data in atrieveFinance.

  • The position management sub-system maintains budgeted positions and associated benefit costs for any budget year and budget ID. Budget ID provides the ability to create different budget scenarios in the same budget year.  The Budget Planning System needs at least one budget ID defined as 0.

  • Positions driven by FTE show starting FTE and standard cost plus any adjustments made to FTE or standard cost. Benefit costs are kept by benefit code as a percentage of positions calculated budget amount. 

  • There are other defined positions where their budget amount is a percentage of FTE positions and they are maintained as a link to their respective FTE positions. Reports can be produced to view/manage the budget amount produced by budgeted positions and their respective benefit costs. 

  • Detail budget transactions can be produced at any time during the creation and maintenance of positions and benefit costs, either through an interface module or immediately during the process. Positions and benefit cost codes can view detail budget transactions. GL accounts can view assigned positions, which in turn will view detail budget transactions.

  • The position management sub-system maintains budget ID's and budget phase ID's.  Budget phase ID's allow budget planners to categorize different stages in the budgeting process (position maintenance and detail budget transaction creation). The system is looking for at least a budget phase ID of 0 (initial create/budget) and 1 (adjustment). The system also provides a facility to enter detailed budget entries or transactions, thus enabling the user to combine the principles of zero-base budgeting with those of percent increase budgeting. 

  • When a satisfactory budget plan has been established, the Budget Planning System provides the user with the ability to transfer these final budgets into atrieveFinance. When required, you may enter new budget account into the Budget Planning System and have that account created in atrieveFinance.

  • The Budget Planning System operates as a sub-system of atrieveFinance.  One of the main advantages is the interfacing capabilities between the two systems. The programs provide for the copying of budget information from atrieveFinance to the Budget Planning System, where the data may be analyzed, changed and prorated in any number of different ways to arrive at a satisfactory end result. The finished product is then interfaced back into the budget fields of atrieveFinance as a completed unit. At no time during these calculations does the Budget Planning System access the users live files; therefore the day to day operations of the clients accounting department are not affected.

  • Data elements available for calculation are actual expenditures, original budget, approved budget, base budget,new budget dollars, increased budget dollars, deleted budget dollars and budget units (i.e.: employees, students, credits, courses, etc.). Calculations may be performed using any or all of these elements, in any number of potential combinations.

  • The user creates calculation parameters which describe, as mathematical formulae, the various calculations that will be used to arrive at a planned budget for all budget accounts. These calculations may contain as many as 10 individual arithmetic steps which will result in the final budget figure. 

  • A budget specification record is created for each budget account or group of accounts specifying the calculation parameters to be used, the budget years for which the specification is to be used, additional factors and limits for the budget account or group of accounts, and any associated accounts to be referenced in the calculation. These may be specified for all accounts, or ranges of accounts may be specified. Calculations may also be set up to reference associated account(s) when a series of accounts are to be used. (i.e.: benefit account where the budget is a percentage of the salary accounts). The budget specification record is the basis for the calculations that are to be performed. There may be any number of specification records for any budget account(s).

  • In many cases, budgets are created through the use of budget requests which specify the account code, quantity required, budget amount required and a description of the budget request. 

  • This information is batched for purposes of balancing and is entered within the Budget Planning System through the budget detail entry module. These transactions have four basic types - budget increases, budget deletions, new budget and base budget.

  • The user may assign any transaction code to these transactions for internal control. The detail entry records are available for budget calculations and reports may be obtained for them at any time. These records can be reported in Budget Planning System reports to prepare budget review documents. 

  • Budget reporting is available through a report writer designed to operate with the Budget Planning System and atrieveFinance enabling you to define reports, select report records, summarize and describe report calculations. The full general ledger account code. account alias code and budget alias code are available for selection and reporting purposes.