Actual vs Budget

The Budgeting and Actuals feature will allow teams who have Asset Groups with full accounting to:

Prepare an Income and Expense Budget for a Financial Year.
Link closed financial periods to budget months.
Track the actual Income and Expenses against the budget.

This feature is hidden behind a flag and a request can be sent to Support for activation.

Budgeting Dashboard

The new Budgeting and Actuals Dashboard can be accessed from the Options Drop down on the Asset Group Accounts DB as shown below.

When you select the Budget and Actuals Dashboard menu option, the Budget and Actuals dashboard will open in a separate tab as shown below.

From this dashboard you can:

Financial Year - select the financial year or create a new financial year. When you open the dashboard for the first time, you will have to create a Financial Year by selecting the option from the Financial Year drop-down.
View the Budget Performance Summary cards
- Month to Date - Operating Profit (Total Income - Total Expenses)
- Year to Date - Operating Profit (Total Income - Total Expenses)
View the budget and actuals records for each Income and Expense account - the display provides 12 months' worth of data covering a complete fin year. Note that some columns and rows can be hidden from the display.
Account Type - select the account type filter (Income Accounts, Expense Accounts, All Accounts)
Search - use the text search field to search for a GL Reference or Category
Show Hidden Columns / Rows - show column and row selector tick boxes that can be ticked/unticked in order to Hide / Un-hide from the display.
Hide and Save Selected Columns / Rows - save the selection of column and row tick boxes and update the display to only show selected columns and rows.
More Filters - open the advanced filter view where additional filters can be set to narrow down the data displayed.
Options drop down - select various menu options available to work with budget templates, link accounting periods, download the budget and actuals report or send the report to contact.

How to create an Income and Expense Budget

Please note - the system will automatically pull in the Income and Expense Accounts (Categories) that have been set up in the chart of accounts for the asset group.

From Scratch using the Dashboard

You can create a budget manually for each Account by clicking on the edit icon for any specific account (category) as shown below. This action will open an Account Budget form that can be used to enter the Budget values for 12 months for the account in question.

With reference to the Account Budget Form for the Income - Rent Commercial account shown in the example above, please note the following:

Provision has been made to enter the budget values for 12 months starting from the next month specified as the year-end month on the Asset Group accounting settings. Therefore, if the year-end has been specified as Feb, the budget months will start in March as shown above.
Fill to End-use this button to auto-complete values in all remaining months from the last value entered. For example, if you enter 50 000 for May and click "Fill to End", the remaining months of the year will all be auto-completed with 50 000.
Clear - use this button to clear all the values entered.
Save Items - always click here to save the entered values.
Close - Click here to close the window

Once you have completed the manual entry of budget values for some of the accounts, the budget values will be displayed in BLUE under the relevant months as shown below.

Using a template

You can also download a budget template of all the Income and Expense Accounts that you can then complete and import again.
You can download a budget template by selecting the "Download Budget Template" option from the Options drop-down menu as shown below.

When you select "Download Budget Template", a window will be displayed providing you with three options as shown below, namely:

Start clean - compile a template with now budget values entered.
Use closed financial period - select a closed financial period and use the actuals from that period as budget values for every month of the fin year.
Use existing budget - select an existing budget and use that as the budget for a new fin year.

The downloaded excel template can now be edited and imported again using the "Import Budget Template" option from the drop-down menu on the dashboard.

Note - any existing budget data for the selected Fin Year will be overridden when the new template is imported.

How to Link Accounting Periods

In order to track actual performance against the budget, the closed accounting periods need to be linked to the budget.

For this purpose, you can select "Link Accounting Periods" from the options drop-down on the dashboard.

A window will be displayed where the links can be made as shown below. Provision has been made to select for each budget month the corresponding closed accounting period from a drop-down menu. Changing any of this is as easy as just deleting the linked period and selecting the correct one for any particular budget month.

Once the periods have been linked, the system will update the Actuals associated with each budget month and display that on the dashboard. Note that the period dates will also be displayed just beneath the months and the current month (open period) also needs to be linked.

See the example shown below for Income Accounts:

The Budget and Actuals Report

You can generate a Budget and Actuals report by selecting the "Budget and Actuals" report option from the Options drop-down on the dashboard.

The system will compile the report and download it in excel format. See the example below.

With reference to the example report above, note the following:

Only actual Income and Expenses are shown for closed months.
Budget and Actuals are shown for the current open month.
Budget and Actuals are shown for the Year to Date.

Sending of the Budget and Actuals Report to Contacts via Email

You can send the Budget and Actuals Report to Contacts of the Asset Group by selecting the option "Send Landlord Budget Report" from the options drop-down menu.

A window will be displayed where you can select the Fin Year as well as the Notification Template to use for the email.

Click "Send Email" to send the report to the Asset Group Contacts.