The Ledger : budgets

Budgets and Encumbrances Net/Surplus Deficit

Karen Badham — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Many of you include budget and encumbrance columns on Income Statements in one way or another. If you use these columns there are some options you can utilize.

These options are on the Format tab. To get to them, select the Format tab and highlight Detail. I'm going to go over each one.

Print change in Net Assets at the end of the report populates a detailed net surplus/deficit section. You will need to mark this if you are going to use any of the other checkboxes I mention.
Print total net surplus/deficit gives you net surplus/deficit section grand totals.
Print Net Assets for encumbrance on a separate line adds a special net surplus/deficit line for encumbrance columns. If this box is not marked the encumbrance columns won't calculate the net surplus/deficit correctly in most cases.
Calculate change in Net Assets for budget columns adds a special net surplus/deficit line for budget columns.

I hope this adds valuable information to your Income Statement!

The Ledger Lowdown: Cut Down on Account Budget Entry Time

Jennifer Maroney — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:00:00 GMT

A common question you've been asking the past month is how to import budgets, so I thought it would be a good topic to cover here. In order to import a budget, you must have the optional module Budget Management.

As you know, the first thing I always say before performing a global process, importing in this case, is to make sure you have a valid backup of your database. This is strongly recommended because the only way to reverse a global process is to either manually correct each record or restore to a backup.

Ok, let's get started:

Create a new budget scenario.
Create a data file or use an existing file.
Here are the fields you should include in your import file; the fields in bold italics are required. You can also add any additional fields if needed. View a sample data file (acctbudgetimport.csv).
Budget Scenario Import ID, Account Number Amount, Period 1 Amount, Period 2 Amount, Period 3 Amount, Period 4 Amount, Period 5 Amount, Period 6 Amount, Period 7 Amount, Period 8 Amount, Period 9 Amount, Period 10 Amount, Period 11 Amount, Period 12 Amount
In Administration, Import, highlight Budget Scenario Account Budget from the Budgets category, and click New. For a list of the exact parameters to select, check out Knowledgebase solution BB67664.

Here are a few import suggestions:

When you create your import file, make sure the fields in the file are in the same order as they are listed on the Fields tab.
On the General tab of the import, I recommend marking the Validate data only checkbox to ensure all data will import before importing the data. This can save you time since FE will import correct rows and ignore incorrect ones. If this happens, you will need to adjust the import file to remove lines that imported successfully and adjust the incorrect lines before you can import again. If you mark the Validate data only checkbox, remember you must unmark the checkbox to be able to actually import the data.
On the Summary tab of the import, select the options to create a control report and exception file. The control report documents the procedure for your records and the exception file enables you to handle problem records separately once the initial import completes.
If you're new to importing, take a look at Knowledgebase solution BB73785, How to import in The Financial Edge — The Basics of Importing.
For more importing tricks, take a look at The User's Edge blog post Grace's bag of import tricks. This post is for RE, but importing is similar between RE and FE.

Happy importing. Talk to you soon!

The Financial Edge 7.75 - Budget Across Fiscal Years

Daniel Dalnekoff — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:30:00 GMT

The Financial Edge 7.75.259.0000 is available for download from our website. With this new release we have the addition of some great new features in the product, and today specifically I would like to discuss what is new with budgets. We now have the capability to budget by Grant! Now while this alone is nice, what we really want to write home about is the ability to budget across fiscal years. Now combining these new pieces of functionality will allow us to budget over the life of a grant, and distribute this budget out to several projects that may be funded by said grant, all the way down to the account level.

Has anyone already started working with period range budgets (the new term for a budget that spans multiple fiscal years)? I am very excited about the addition of this functionality, as several organizations I have worked with in the past already budget for multiple fiscal years on paper and the ability to track this type of information in the software is just another way that The Financial Edge can continue to help an organization's business office to further achieve their goals.

If you have not yet had the opportunity to read about the other new features of the 7.75 release, stay tuned as I intend to at least give each new piece of major functionality a "shout-out" here on the ledger.