What Budget Controls are Available?

SunSystems budgeting allows you to hold budget values against accounts and analysis codes. These budget values can be used in two different ways in the system:

  • to control expenditure and warn if any transactions exceed the budget available
  • to provide comparative values for actual/budget/forecast reports and inquiries.

A budget may be a single account code, or a combination of account code and analysis code. You can apply the SunSystems Budget Checking facility to transactions as they are entered. There are two types of budget checking available, depending on the SunSystems modules you are using:

  • expenditure checking
  • commitment checking.

Expenditure Checking

Over expenditure checking monitors actual expenditure against budget, for accounts you select in SunSystems Financials. As you enter or import ledger transactions for accounts, or you enter purchase invoices in SunSystems Order Fulfilment, the system checks the total actual expenditure against the allocated budget and warns if a transaction exceeds the budget defined for an account.

Using expenditure checking, the available budget is calculated as follows:

  • Available Budget = Budget - Actual Expenditure - Committed Expenditure

    A warning appears if the transaction amount exceeds this available budget amount. You can override this depending on various settings.

See What is Expenditure Checking? for more information.

Commitment Checking

Commitment checking is only available if you are using purchase orders in SunSystems Order Fulfilment.

Committed expenditure is the total of any outstanding purchase orders raised for the account/analysis code combination and represents the amount you are committed to spend for the account. When performing over-expenditure checking in ledger transactions and purchase invoices, it can be used as part of the formula to determine if a transaction exceeds a budget.

Commitment checking is used to check purchase orders as they are entered into Order Fulfilment Purchasing, to prevent orders being raised that would exceed the budget available.

Using commitment checking, the available budget is calculated as follows:

  • Available Budget = Budget - Actual Expenditure - Committed Expenditure

    A warning appears if the transaction amount exceeds this available budget amount. You can override this depending on various settings.
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