Create and manage budget register entries

10 minutes

After setting up basic budgeting, you can begin entering budget amounts. If you plan to use budgeting workflows, create the workflows and then assign them to budget codes before you begin making budget register entries. Also, if you plan to use budget control, you need to set up budget control before entering budget amounts.

This unit reviews how to create and manage budget register entries, including how to enter original budget amounts, create recurring amounts, and allocate amounts across dimensions or periods. Additionally, it reviews the process for creating budget revisions and budget transfers.

Budget entries

To enter budget data, go to Budgeting > Workspaces > Budget register entry page, which consists of a header and lines. You apply the header information to the whole budget register entry. The lines (account entries) are where you enter budget amounts for specific dimension combinations.

You can use budget register entries for the following tasks:

Create budget amounts
Transfer budget amounts
Allocate budget amounts across periods or dimensions
Create recurring budget register entries
Revise budget register entries

For some expenses, such as rent or lease, the budgeted amount is typically the same amount for each period. You can replicate a budget account entry to accommodate this need.

For example, you decide to create a budget account entry every month until December 31, 2022. You perform this function on June 22, 2023. Therefore, after you apply this function, you have budget transaction lines for every month through the end of the year.

The following video demonstrates how to use budget register entries to request an original budget and work with the Budget control statistics inquiry.

Budget transfers

You can create budget transfers by creating a budget register entry that has a budget code associated with the Transfer budget type. You can decrease the budget of one or more financial dimension values and then increase the budget of other financial dimension values by the same amount. Additionally, you can create a budget transfer when you're creating a budget register entry.

For example, if you notice that a manual budget reservation will exceed the budget, you can create a budget transfer to satisfy the over-budget condition. You can also create budget transfers from source documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, and from accounting journals.

You can create a transfer from any budget type, such as Original budget or Revision.

The following screenshot shows the Transfer page.

Important fields that you need to fill out on the Transfer form include:

Fiscal year - Select 2016 because you're transferring your previous year's balances for the current year's budget.
Start date and End date - Select these values to indicate the first and last date of your fiscal year.
Quantity - The quantity is 1 in this field. In this example, the Unit is Months, meaning that the amounts come in as totals for each month.

The preceding screenshot shows the rules for transferring the balances as follows:

Factor - The value in this field is 1.10, indicating that the budget will increase 10% from its original amount.
Minimum - The value in this field is 1,000.00, meaning that the system doesn't transfer balances under that amount to the budget.
Round-off - The value in this field is 10.00, so the system rounds each amount to the nearest 10 increment.
Transfer credits as revenue - Change this value to Yes so that it transfers credit balances as revenue balances (instead of a negative expense).

Budget allocations

You can use budget allocation terms to define a predetermined allocation to dimension values by percentage.

For example, if you allocate specific budgeted amounts for travel based on a percentage by department, you can't define that allocation by using an allocation term that you later use when creating budget amounts.

The use of an allocation term provides an automated way to create the breakdown of budget amounts across dimension values or combinations of dimension values.

Use budget control

When budget control is set up, you can check source documents and accounting journals for budget funds availability. By setting up budget control, an organization can decide on which source documents and accounting journals to apply the budget check.

You can turn on budget control for a specific dimension or a set of dimensions that are subject to budget check. By applying budget check, you can prevent the source documents, such as purchase requisitions, purchase orders, or vendor invoices, from extra processing if they exceed the available budget funds.

Before you can use budget control on a purchase order, you need to activate budget checking for purchase orders and turn on the budget control configuration. After you turn on budget control, users receive budget control warning and error messages in documents and journals that are set up for budget control.

Remember, you can set up budget control so that users are warned when they exceed the budget funds but are still able to confirm or post the transaction. Users can view the details of failed budget checks on the Budget control errors and warnings page.

From this page, users can drill into the Budget control statistics by period page to view budget availability details and reservations for a selected budget control dimension combination. Users can also drill into the Budget control statistics page to view the budget availability for all financial dimension combinations in budget control.

If you turn on budget control for purchase orders, the budget manager can use the Ledger budgets and forecasts workspace to review the queue for all unconfirmed purchase orders that have budget check warnings and errors. If the budget manager has over-budget permissions set up, they can confirm purchase orders directly in the workspace.

Consider the following scenario

Recently, expenses are larger than previous years because of growth. The controller has decided that the company should increase the available budget for the combination of Department 010 and Cost center 0101. They must first establish the budget amounts, and then users can begin entering the expenses.