Entering Budget Values

Budget values are entered onto accounts as budget transactions, in the same way as ledger transactions are posted to ledger accounts. A budget can be held as a total for the year, entered into any of the periods available. Alternatively, the budget can be spread across the periods in the year.

Budget values are subject to the same journal validation, balancing and posting rules. The budget transactions are maintained to provide a full budget audit trial.

To use budget checking, you must first set up Budget Check Setup records. See 'Defining Budget Checks' for more information.

Budget values can be entered onto the budget ledger using any of the following methods:

• Ledger Entry (LEN)
• Ledger Import (LIM)
• Corporate Allocation Run (CAL)

Budget transactions can be entered onto a budget ledger using Ledger Entry (LEN) in the same way as you would enter actual transactions. However, you may also prepare your budget file in a spreadsheet package, and then transfer the data to the budget ledger using Ledger Import (LIM).

Budgets can be as detailed as you require. You can create budgets for individual accounts by posting directly to these accounts.

If you report against budget on a summary basis, you can enter the budget for a range of accounts in any one account. For example, if you always report sales accounts as a range, you might set the budget in the first sales account in the budget ledger.

Budgets can also be entered by analysis code, for example, by department or project. To enter the budget for an analysis code or analysis code combination, you post a transaction to the budget account for the appropriate budget amount and reference the analysis codes on the transaction.

If you want to set a budget by analysis code only, you should post the budget to a single account and point all of the relevant actual accounts to this one budget account.

See 'Setting Budget Controls for an Account'.

When entering the budget into the ledger, budget records are created for the unique combination of the following:

• Account Code - this must be the Budget Check Account defined on the Budget Check Setup.
• Period
• Analysis Code 1 (optional - dependent on the Budget Check Setup)
• Analysis Code 2 (optional - dependent on the Budget Check Setup)
• Analysis Code 3 (optional - dependent on the Budget Check Setup)
• Analysis Code 4 (optional - dependent on the Budget Check Setup)
• Analysis Code 5 (optional - dependent on the Budget Check Setup)

The above details are taken from the journal when posted. The normal Chart of Account and Journal Type rules apply, so care must be taken with mandatory, optional, prohibited analysis and so on. Budgets must be entered in the base currency.

On posting the journal, entries are made in the Primary Budget Ledger, and also in the budgeting tables. The budgeting tables are used by the budget checking functionality. The Primary Budget Ledger is then used for reference only.

For purchase orders and purchase invoices, amounts are entered as debit amounts. The following is an example of a journal entry:

Example 1 of a budget:

Account	Period	Budget
A	11/2005	USD 100
A	12/2005	USD 150
A	01/2006	USD 200
A	02/2006	USD 100
and so on
A	12/2006	USD 100
B	11/2005	USD 100
B	12/2005	USD 100
B	01/2006	USD 150
and so on

Example 2 of a budget:

Account	Period	Analysis Code 1	Budget
A	11/2005	Dept A	USD 100
A	11/2005	Dept B	USD 100
A	12/2005	Dept A	USD 150
A	12/2005	Dept B	USD 100
A	01/2006	Dept A	USD 200
A	01/2006	Dept B	USD 200
A	02/2006	Dept A	None
A	02/2006	Dept B	USD 150
and so on

Reallocating Budgets

Budget amounts can be moved between accounts, account and analysis combinations or periods. A journal is entered to credit the source budget and debit the target budget.

For example, if budget is to be moved from Account A Period 04/2006, to Account B Period 03/2006, the following journal must be created:

Account	Analysis	Period	Amount	D/C
A		04/2006	USD 100	C
Miscellaneous Account		04/2006	USD 100	D
B		03/2006	USD 100	D
Miscellaneous Account		03/2006	USD 100	C

Note: You should not move more than the available budget for that period because you will cause an overspend against the budget. The available budget is calculated as: available budget = budget - committed expenditure - actual expenditure.

Manual Budget Entry

You can use standard journal types to enter budgets. However, it is advisable to define separate journal types specifically for entering budgets, so that they can be easily differentiated.

Note: Budget journals are subject to normal double entry controls so you may want to define a budget suspense account and use this as the account on the balancing postings for all budget journals.

Predefining Budget Transactions

Journal Presets (JNP) can help you to speed up the entry of budget transactions. The following may be useful if you want to enter an annual figure and spread it over each period in the financial year:

1. The first preset line is a nonposting line, on which you enter the annual budget amount.
2. You may define any number of subsequent lines, one for each period, each of which are to be assigned an equal share of the annual budget. Enter 1R in the Amount field.
3. It is advisable that the line corresponding to the last period of the year acts as a rounding period. Enter 1RU in the Amount field to achieve this.
4. The balancing entry lines for each period can have the Debit/Credit field set to Period. This sets the value for the line to the period balancing amount, to ensure that entries for each period sum to zero. For a budget spread over 12 accounting periods, therefore, you have a non-posting line, plus 12 debit and 12 credit posting lines.

Journal presets can cater for budgets that are not spread evenly throughout the year. You can enter the appropriate ratio to be applied for each period in the Amount field.

Generating Budgets in a Spreadsheet

Most spreadsheet packages output a file in a format suitable for SunSystems Financials. You should refer to the Ledger Import for details of the required file layout.