Creating and Maintaining Budgets and Plans

Budgets are estimates of anticipated receivables and payables for a specific time frame. They are usually based on historical facts, including past sales and growth trends. The budget amounts are used by General Ledger reports, financial statements, and the Chart of Accounts Report. Budgets are also displayed when viewing posted General Ledger (G/L) transactions to allow a comparison between a period's actual transaction amount and the budgeted amount.

The Chart of Accounts Budget and Plan form is a worksheet that you use to create budgets and plans for each individual account, accounting period, and fiscal year. This form maintains information for budgets, plans, and actual change amounts. Actual change values are used only to define statistical accounts.

The Chart of Accounts Budget and Plan form allows you to store budgets for multiple fiscal years. Each time a new fiscal year is added to the accounting periods or a new Chart of Accounts is added, you must manually add corresponding budget, plan, and actual records. You can either click New to add them one at a time or use the Copy Balances to Budgets form to copy ranges of Unit Codes and account ranges to and from fiscal years. These amounts are useful for comparing actual financial activity against budgeted or planned activity.

Budget amounts and plan amounts are handled the same way. The plan amounts simply allow for a second budget or planning figure. A common practice is to use the plan amounts to maintain last year's sales figures.

If you are using a second Analytical Ledger in addition to the General Ledger, see About Analytical Accounting to learn how budgets and plans are affected.

To enter amounts manually for a new fiscal year:

Select Actions > New.
Select the account.
Select the fiscal year, if necessary.
In the Budgeted Change field, enter the amount.
In the Planned Change field, enter the amount.
Click Actions > Save.

You can use the Planned Change amounts in this form to contain last year's account balances.

To create a base value for budgeted amounts that increment each preceding accounting period by a specific percentage:

Select Actions > Budget Growth Auto-Set.
The system displays the Chart of Accounts Budget and Plan Growth form.
Enter the base amount and the desired percentage increase per accounting period.
This process updates each accounting period for that year.
To save the entries, click OK.

To create a base value for planned amounts for all currently defined accounting periods that increment each preceding accounting period by a specific percentage:

Select Actions > Plan Growth Auto-Set.
The system displays the Chart of Accounts Budget and Plan Growth form.
Enter the base amount value and the desired percentage increase rate of change per accounting period.
This process updates each accounting period for that year.
To save the entries, click OK.