How to Create and Track Budgets

This article will help you understand how to create and track budgets in Precoro. 

But first, make sure that you already understand the functionality of budgets.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Most Common Budget User Cases
• What You Can Do with the Budgets Module in Precoro
• How to Activate the Budgets Module
• How to Create a Budget
• How to Edit a Budget
• How to Create a Budget with Multiple Custom Periods
• How to Track a Budget

Most Common Budget User Cases

• It’s hard to track a Project budget when you have more than one budget in one Project.
• I don’t understand the budget availability per month/quarter/year.
• I have the same budgets per different periods, and I should create a monthly budget with the same info.

What You Can Do with the Budgets Module in Precoro

Create a budget with multiple budget lines 

• The budget line is a separate budget, included in the main budget.
• Each budget line can be assigned to Purchase Orders and Invoices.
• This module can be used to track budgets per different costs. Each budget line can be at a separate cost.

Create a budget with multiple periods

• Each budget line can have different periods: months, quarters, or one custom period.
• This case can be used as a yearly budget divided by cost and periods.
• In editing mode, you can remove the previously created periods.

How to Activate the Budgets Module

You can enable/disable the Budget module by going to Configuration → Basic Setting → Budgets tab.

To set the necessary role for a user, go to Configuration → User Management → Click the Edit button → Open the Roles tab and check the Budgets field.

The Budget role enables user with the following access:

• Access to the Budget module.
• Budget creation and tracking.
• View all company’s Budgets.
• Set user as a Budget holder.

How to Create a Budget

1. Open Budgets from the left-side menu and click on the Create button.
2. Fill out and set up all fields. Once done, hit the Create button to save the changes.
   
   • Decide what to include in your budget
   • Set up the period/duration
   • Specify a Deducted Sum.

3. Fill out the budget lines. All changes will be saved automatically, but you can also click on the Save button.

• Set a name/description for each budget
• Choose a location
• Add Document/Item Custom Fields (if you decided to include them in the budget)
• Make a budget limited (if needed)
• Fill out the amounts for each period.

You can also create your budget

•  By Departments and/or Projects

It can help you restrict access to budgets for employees from another department. 

• Or by Chart of Accounts / Cost Centers

It allows you to dive deeper into tracking costs at the accounting level.

How to Edit a Budget

If you should be the only person editing budgets, we advise you to put your user email as a budget holder for all the budgets instead of the current budget holders.

If current budget holders or other users should only view budgets (see and track the progress but not edit budget information), they need to activate the Budgets role in the User Management. 

You can edit the budget to change the following information at any time:

• Budget name
• Budget holder
• Deducted sum
• Edit, delete, and add budget lines
• Remove the period.

To manually edit the budget, click the Edit button on the Budgets list page: 

To edit a budget via template, go to the budget needed and press the Update Budget button. Then, download the template, edit all the fields you need to change, delete the rows with tips, and upload this template. 

How to Create a Budget with Multiple Custom Periods

To customize budget lines for specific periods, you should create a budget and set the period as Custom. Once you create a first budget line and fill out all required fields, press the Add Period button. 

The start and end dates will be changed according to set periods. Also, in editing mode, you can remove the necessary custom periods. 

Please note that once the period is deleted, all details about this budget will be removed from all Purchase Orders and Invoices associated with it.

How to View and Track Budgets

You can view your list of Budgets by

• parent Budget;
• or Budget line names.

Also, use filters to configure the Budgets list appearance.

You can track a Budget: 

1. Through Reports. You can use a Budget Usage Report or a custom Budget Report.

2. Through the Revision History.

What changes you will be able to see:

• Budget Name
• Description
• Periods
• Sum
• Locations
• Items Custom Fields
• Documents Custom Fields
• Adding/Deleting Budget lines and sublines.

Where to find a Budget Revision History

Open the Budget page, scroll down to the specification table, and press the Revision History button on the left side of the specification.

To make a comparison, select two Revisions and press the Compare button below.

 

 

3. Through the Budget Dashboard. To see how the budget is being used, just visit the relevant budget page. 

• This dashboard displays all relevant information in real-time:
  • The total amount of the whole budget
  • The total amount Used 
  • How much is Reserved in the budget for recurring documents
  • What amount is still Available
  • Start and End Dates of the budget
  • The Budget holder’s email
  • How the Deducted Sum is calculated.
• On the pie charts, you can find statistics regarding your spending by Location and Supplier.

• At the bottom, you can see all the information by budget lines.

• Besides, you can set filters by
  •  Budget
  • Location
  • Departments.

If the budget is created by Items Custom Fields, you can set filters only by Location. 

This is how your budget dashboard looks like with filters set: