Plans for importing budgets

Use one of these plans for importing budgets:

  • A budget originates at the corporate office using external applications:

    • The Corporate Finance and Merchandising departments generate a corporate budget for the upcoming year.
    • The Financial Planning and Staffing departments specify desired payroll levels for the budget, which are usually based on fixed labor as a percentage of sales (L%S).
    • The Store Operations departments (including store managers, district managers, regional managers, and divisional vice-presidents) provide input. This collaborative process creates support for the budget throughout the corporate hierarchy. This process is the solicitation process.

    A budget that originates at the corporate office is a top-down budget.

  • The Budget Management module can create a top-down budget by applying an algorithm to historical actuals such as sales and AHR.
  • The Budget Management module can refine a top-down budget by supporting the solicitation process, where budget managers at multiple levels in the corporate hierarchy can edit and approve the budget data. See Plan Generation.
  • The Budget Creation module creates a bottom-up budget by aggregating weekly historical data from retail departments about labor costs and sales and applying an algorithm to the data. See Plan Generation.

Creating a bottom-up budget does not implicitly include a solicitation process. However, a bottom-up budget can be exported from the Budget Creation module and then imported into the Budget Management module for a solicitation process. See Export a Plan.

For information on the execution groups used in importing a plan, see Execution groups for importing a plan.