Overview of budgets

If the Branch accounting functionality is enabled in your system, budgets can be created on a per-branch basis, with one ledger holding the budgets for all branches. If this functionality is not enabled, each budget you create is intended for the entire organisation.

Detailed budgets may include articles that are split by subaccounts into multiple subarticles. If the Subaccounts functionality is not enabled in your system, budget articles are created on a per-account basis.

This overview discusses the functionality of budgets in a system where the Branch accounting and Subaccounts functionalities are enabled.

In its simplest window, a budget is a list of planned or forecasted revenues and expenses.
You can create such budgets as single-level lists of budget articles with the amounts representing specific expenses and revenues for a budget year at a particular branch. In such budgets, a budget article is defined by an account-subaccount pair (or by a particular account in a system where subaccounts are not used).

Simple budgets, unlike hierarchical budgets, require no preliminary configuring. You can create single-level budgets by using the Budget (GL302010) window.
In the same budget ledger, you can keep budgets of all the branches of your organisation for one financial year or multiple years.
You can create separate budgets for each branch.

You can create a list of budget articles in one of the following ways:

• By manually selecting an account and subaccount and typing the amount for each budget article.
• By importing the list from an Excel spreadsheet.
• By loading the account-subaccount pairs from an actual ledger or from another budget ledger with their amounts.
  You can specify a multiplier to calculate the budget amounts based on the amounts available in the source ledger.

Also, you can create the budget in multiple stages that may include:

• Creating a list of account-subaccount pairs manually, by importing the list, or by loading it.

  You may create a list by using one of the methods or a combination of the methods.

• Entering, loading, or importing the amounts.

If no budget tree has been configured in your system, you can create only single-level budgets.
If your company needs hierarchical budgets, you can configure the budget structure by using the Budget configuration (GL205000) window.
Review the budgets of all branches to include all the budget levels used by your branches, because the same tree will be used for all branches and all budget versions.

A budget tree has leaves or budget articles, each of which is defined by an account-subaccount pair and nodes; each node may include leaf articles and nodes.
A node article can be defined by its description and optionally by an account and subaccount mask.

An account-subaccount pair may be used only once within the tree.

The main difference between leaf articles and node articles is that when you create a budget, you can enter the amounts for leaves, but not for nodes.
The system calculates the amount for each node automatically as the sum of the amounts of all its leaf articles.
The amounts for nodes containing other nodes are also calculated automatically, based on the amounts of all leaf articles within those nodes.
For an example of a budget structure, see: Budget structure example,

You can populate each node in any of the following ways:

• By manually creating a list of subarticles: nodes, nodes and leaf articles, or only leaf articles.
• By generating the list of pairs for the specified range of accounts and the specified subaccount mask.
  Depending on whether the On-the-fly entry check box is selected for subaccounts in the Segment keys (CS202000) window, the possible pairs will be generated for only subaccounts available on the list of subaccounts (if the check box is cleared) or for all possible subaccounts resulting from combining all segment values (if the check box is selected). Once all the specified pairs have been generated, you can delete the pairs that are not needed in the budget article.

Modifications of the budget tree do not affect released budgets, so you can modify the tree at any time.

When you prepare budgets in Visma.net ERP, in addition to budget articles that are leaves or nodes, you can use budget articles that are leaf articles with aggregating masks for accounts and subaccounts. An article of this type can be used for initial aggregation of insignificant amounts into one budget article.
For example: Suppose that you are planning office supplies for the next year based on the amount spent last year.
You don't want to enter all the amounts for office supplies required for each employee in each department.
Rather, you want to get the total amount previously spent on such supplies, to use this amount as a basis for a new amount for such supplies adjusted for increase or decrease in the number of employees and for other factors.

In such a case, you add to the budget tree a leaf budget article that aggregates amounts over multiple similar account-subaccount pairs defined by account and subaccount masks. Then, on pre-loading the actual data for this budget article, the system will calculate the sum of the amounts available for all pairs defined by the specified masks. However, you will not be able to view the details of the article or the list of account-subaccount pairs defined by the masks and their amounts. You can edit this aggregated amount as an amount of any other leaf article.

For details, see Budget structure example

You can create hierarchical budgets by using the>Budget configuration (GL205000) window.
Each budget should be saved to a ledger of the Budget type.
Each budget ledger may store budgets for all branches for all financial years.

If you had created single-level budgets before you configured the budget tree, you can convert each of them to a hierarchical budget based on the budget tree.

CAUTION: Before you start converting simple budgets into hierarchical budgets, make sure that there are no conflicts between the tree and the single-level budget.
No conversion will be performed if any mask used for a single-level budget is split into multiple masks on a tree or if multiple masks used somewhere in the single-level budget are merged into a single mask for the tree. To do this, in the Budget (GL302010) window, select an existing single-level budget, and click Manage budgets in the window toolbar. In the dialog box, select the Convert budget using current budget configuration action and click OK.

Once you start to prepare a new budget by using the Budget (GL302010) window, the system loads the budget articles from the budget tree.
After that, you will be able to enter the amounts for the budget articles loaded from the tree and add new articles.

You cannot remove any of the articles loaded window the budget tree even if they are not needed in this particular budget.
You can enter the amounts for leaf budget articles in one of the following ways:

• Manually
• By importing the amounts from a file
• By loading the data from an actual ledger or from an existing budget.

To facilitate data loading, Visma.net ERP provides the Preload budget articles wizard, which helps you select the budget articles for loading and specify the data source. You can load the amounts for the budget at once or separately, for each node of the budget. You can load the articles from an actual ledger or from another budget, or you can import the amounts from a file. You can specify a multiplier to calculate the budget amounts based on the amounts in the selected source.
For more information, see: Prepare a budget

The amounts specified for an article should be distributed over the periods of the year before you can release the budget article.
For the budget article to be released, the amount of the article must be equal to the distributed amount.
You can enter the amounts for each period manually, or you can distribute them automatically by clicking Distribute in the table toolbar of the Budget (GL302010) window and selecting the option that defines how the amounts should be distributed: evenly or by period balances.

If your company has an adjustment period, it will be included in the distribution performed based on available balances for the periods of the year. If you want to distribute the amounts over the financial periods evenly, the system excludes the adjustment period from this distribution.

To facilitate distributing, you also can select whether you want to distribute the amount for only the selected article or for all articles in the same node. Also, you can select a node and distribute the amounts for all subarticles of this node.

You can create a budget and save it in a ledger of the Budget type. Generally, each budget ledger holds a budget of a specific type for all branches.
To create different budgets for the same year, such as worst-case, break-even, and best-case, use different budget ledgers.
When the system loads the data for a new budget scenario from an existing budget, you can specify the multiplier to decrease or increase the amounts being loaded for this budget scenario.

Later, you can use the same ledger to create the budget of the same type for the next budget year.

The amounts of budget articles are not posted to the budget ledger until the articles are released.
Only leaf budget articles may be released. The amounts for the budget articles that are nodes will be calculated based on the amounts of released articles.

To release a leaf budget article, make sure the year amount of the article is equal to the sum of amounts calculated over the financial periods of the year.

You can release the entire budget or the selected budget articles by using the Release budgets (GL505510) window.

Once a budget article has been released, the Released check box is selected for it in the Budget (GL302010) window.

You can modify budgets at any time. Once you have modified a budget article, you have to release the article to view its amount on reports.
Also, you can roll back the budget to the previous released budget.

You can compare the budget being prepared to actual data of the previous year, to year-to-date amounts of the current year, or to other budgets.

Save the budget before comparison by clicking on the window toolbar.

To compare the budgets, in the summary area of the Budget (GL302010) window, ensure that the ledger and the financial year of the budget being prepared is selected in the Budget and Financial year fields respectively. In the Compare to ledger and the Compare to year fields, select the ledger and the financial year of the budget needed for comparison.

Once you have specified the required ledgers and financial years in the table, the system adds a row to each budget article being prepared that shows the amounts of the budget of the compared ledger and financial year.

Only the released amounts of the budget articles are shown in the table.

If the Multi-branch support functionality is available in your system (the Multi-branch support functionality is enabled in the Enable/disable functionalities (CS100000) window), you can compare the budgets of different branches by selecting the required branches in the Branch and Compare to branch fields .

In Visma.net ERP, organisations implement general access restrictions by assigning roles to users of the system.
The roles assigned to users allow them to perform specific tasks required by their position in the organisation.
If a role allows a user to view or edit budget articles, the user can view all the articles, including those that might be sensitive.
Setting up proper restriction groups can ensure that only particular users see particular budget articles.
A restriction group allows access to particular objects of specific types (which are included in the group) to only the users who are members of the same group.

Objects of the following types can be included in a restriction group:

• Budget articles (leaf articles or nodes at any level)
• Users

To protect sensitive budget articles, you create a restriction group by using the Budget access (GL105030) window and include the budget articles and the users who should have access to these articles. As a result, the users not included in the group will not be able to access the budget articles and these articles' subarticles if there are any. You can add new budget articles to existing groups by using the Restriction groups by budget article (GL105020) window.