District Budget Planning
The District Budget Planning screen allows for multiple budgeting scenarios to be considered while deciding upon an official budget. These scenarios display budget totals from previous years and have the ability to create new budget lines. You will also have the option to itemize budgets. Once a tentative budget is in place, all users can begin operations in the next fiscal year, even before the budget is officially adopted. Temporary placeholder budgets will automatically reconcile with the official budget upon its adoption.
Note: If planning for the next fiscal year as part of end of year rollover, districts must create Zero Dollar Budgets or Unofficial Budgets in District Budget Planning before purchase requests can be entered for the upcoming year. If Zero Dollar Budgets are created, users can create purchase requests as long as they have permission for negative budgets under Menu permissions.
1. From the Budgeting/General Ledger menu, click District Budget Planning.
2. The District Budget Planning screen defaults to the Scenarios tab. If on another tab, click the Scenarios tab.
The Scenarios tab contains a list of previously created budgeting Scenarios as well as the option to Create a Scenario.
3. To begin your scenario, type a Scenario Name in the text box.
4. Select Expense or Revenue from the pull-down.
5. Select the correct fiscal year. Since you are planning for the next year, you need to change the fiscal year to the next year.
6. Click Create.
You can work on more than one scenario at a time. All scenarios will pull from the same budgeting data, but you may want to create multiple different plans depending on possible changes and unforeseen circumstances. In the end, you will only be able to adopt one official, but can create as many scenario plans as you like.
Budget plans are viewed within the Current Scenario tab.
Accounting strip information is displayed in columns dedicated to each element. Note: The Desc column is an optional description field that serves as a label for the entire accounting strip, as configured within Setup > Settings.
Subsequent columns display historical data for each accounting strip indicating how they were budgeted in years past.
The current year contains both an Orig. Budget (per the originally adopted budget) and a Curr. Budget (accounting for any amendments since the budget was adopted).
Payroll budgets will also pull into the budget scenario. Funding for open positions will factor in as money already spent (i.e. the scenario will pull this data as if the position has already been filled).
There is also a Spent column that indicates how much has been depleted from any given accounting strip for the current year.
7. Adjust the budget scenario for the next fiscal year by specifying the Planned Budget.
If there is more than one account linked to the specified budget where wildcards or asterisks are used to include more than one element in the account (7xx for Object or * for Function), the Planned Budget column will be inactive.
8. While planned budgets can be entered as a lump sum, click View Breakdown to generate an itemized list of what is attributed to the line’s corresponding accounting strip.
8a. To access a breakdown where multiple accounts are linked together, click View Budgets.
8b. The View Budgets pop-up window displays the accounting strips, Desc, previous years budgets, Orig. Budget, Curr. Budget, Spent, Planned Budget, and Submitted Budget. From here, click View Breakdown.
The Amount entered for each item will be added to the amount allocated to the Planned Budget. This allows for dynamic budgets to be generated based off of their constituent items, ensuring that there is a record as to why an amount was budgeted for any given scenario.
The Adjustments pop-up screen will auto-populate with an Uncategorized amount if a number is entered for this strip in the Planned Budget column.
a. To enter a new line, type the Amount and Description on the top white line; then press Enter.
b. To delete an existing line, click the red minus sign.
c. To edit an existing line, simply click on the amount or description and make changes.
9. To mark an accounting strip for removal, select the check box in the Remove column. This will indicate that you do not wish to roll this account into the next fiscal year. Note: This can be useful for those inactive $0 budgets, as shown in the image.
The Submitted Budget column populates when the budget manager has submitted a budget to the district and the budget has been approved. The Submitted Budget will be populated for both manager and non-manager budgets (for non-manager the field reflects the same number as the Planned Budget column). Note: When you are ready to adopt, the amount to be considered in the adoption will be the Submitted Budget total.
At the bottom of the page, the Current Page Totals is listed. The totals here will change as you sift through pages. In the image shown, the Current Page Totals is just for page 1.
The Grand Totals shows the actual grand total for the 17/18 Budget, 18/19 Budget, etc. and is not affected by a change of the page.
If you use any of the filters to change the data, the Current Page Totals and Grand Totals will change. See Additional Features for more information on how to use filters.
10. Click View Manager Detail to view all budget lines that pertain to your (the manager’s) school/department and make adjustments to the planned budget with the “Override Approved Manager Budgets” permission enabled via Setup > Profiles. When this profile permission is enabled and all budget lines are displayed, you will be allowed to edit the planned budget for any account strips.
Regular non-manager budgets and manager budgets cannot display simultaneously in the Breakdown.
a. Click Hide Manager Detail to display all budget lines.
11. Click Add New Budget Line to create new accounting strips directly on the scenario screen by selecting the relevant elements.
12. A duplicate scenario can be created with the Copy Scenario feature. After clicking the button, the Current Scenario tab will load the newly copied version once the new scenario has been named. This will also be accessible from the table on the Scenarios tab.
13. Click the Update Budgets button to add any new budgets that were added by any users since the scenario was created. This feature will also update the scenario with current expenditures, amendments, and revisions to the budget.
1. Once the scenario has been properly configured for the upcoming fiscal year, it must be adopted in order to function. To access the adoption buttons, scroll down to the bottom of the page.
POs that fall into the next fiscal year cannot be processed until adopting a budget.
2. Prior to official board approval, budgets should be adopted as either Adopt Zero Dollar Budgets or Adopt Unofficial Budgets. Only Adopt Official Budgets once the scenario has been finalized and confirmed.
3. Clicking Adopt Zero Dollar Budgets allows for the budget’s accounting strips to be referenced for POs in the upcoming fiscal year, though the Planned Budget is zeroed out and a negative balance is accrued. This balance is reconciled with the finalized budget once the scenario is official.
Negative budget permissions must first be set up before using this feature. Navigate to the Setup menu; click on Menu. From here, you must choose which profiles you wish to set up. Select the profile from the pull-down and navigate to Purchasing and select the check box for Negative Budgets.
4. Click Adopt Unofficial Budgets to reference the funds allocated to each accounting strip, although any spending will not be finalized until the budget is official.
1. Click the Budget Managers tab to configure Permission to budget specific accounting strips.
2. Select the applicable Fiscal Year from the pull-down.
3. Select a user/employee from the Manager pull-down.
4. Specify which accounting strip that user should manage by entering all relevant element information.
A wildcard value of “XXXX” or an asterisk (*) can be substituted for an actual element number to indicate that the manager will have access to all accounting strips that fall under that element.
5. Press Enter to save the line. Once added, the line turns yellow.
6. Click Save.
7. To add additional accounting strips to a manager, click the green plus sign all the way to the right of the line. This will create a blank line under the manager’s other assigned accounts. To add more accounting strips, continue to click the green plus sign until all have been added.
a. Enter the elements of the account strip.
8. Each managed strip can be given a Planned Budget, and will also list historical data--budgets from previous years, the current budget, and the amount spent.
9. Select the Allow Over check box to grant the manager permission to plan a budget past the amount you or the district enter here. For example, the first column shows a planned budget of $500,000. Selecting the Allow Over check box will allow the manager to plan to spend more than $500,000.
10. To delete a budget manager’s line, click the delete button (red minus sign).
Deleting the line that contains the manager’s name/ user’s name, will delete all attached strips as well.
11. Click Save after any changes are applied, which will display in yellow.
As managers are assigned accounting strips, you will see a Status column appear. You will see one of four options here: Pending, In Progress, Approved, or Denied.
Pending shows for budgets that have been submitted by managers for review. As seen in the image above, if Pending, the district staff will have the option to View Budgets, Approve or Deny the budget plan.
In Progress will show for budgets that are currently being planned by the budget manager not yet finished or submitted. The only option here is View Budgets.
12. If the budget is Approved by the district, the district/user can click View Budgets to pull the planned budget amount into a budget scenario.
If the budget is Denied by the district, only View Budgets will be available. The budget will not pull into the budget scenario until resubmitted by the manager and approved by the district.
1. From the Budgeting/General Ledger menu, click District Budget Planning.
2. Click the History tab.
The History tab displays the Name of the budget scenario, the Type of budget, the Fiscal Year, and the Total amount of the budget scenario.
2. Click the Name text field to edit the title of the budget scenario, as needed.
3. Click View to open the adopted budget scenario in the Current Scenario tab.
From this screen, you can review the adopted scenario.
4. Enter Accounting Strip Filters such as Facility, Fund, Function, etc., then click Search to view specific accounts represented in the budget. You can also select the Show Element Descriptions check box to displays element names/descriptions in your search.
View the budget Current Page Totals and Grand Totals for the selected accounting strips or the entire budget located in the last two rows. The Current Page Totals displays the two for the page you are viewing, while the Grand Totals displays the total of all pages.
5. Click View Manager Detail to view all budget lines that pertain to your (the manager’s) school/department.
Regular non-manager budgets and manager budgets cannot display simultaneously in the Breakdown.
a. Click Hide Manager Detail to display all budget lines.
6. Click View Budgets to view budgets for accounting strips linked to this accounting strip--this comes into play when the specified accounting strip houses several other accounts; for example, when wildcards and asterisks are used to indicate multiple accounts.
From this pop-up window, you can view all the accounts included in the budget.
7. Click View Breakdown to generate an itemized list of what is attributed to the line’s corresponding accounting strip.
The Amount entered for each item will be added to the amount allocated to the Planned Budget. This allows for dynamic budgets to be generated based off of their constituent items, ensuring that there is a record as to why an amount was budgeted for any given scenario.
To conduct a search of accounts, click the Account Lookup button. This opens a pop-up window giving you the ability to search through all available elements and corresponding codes and descriptions.
Use the Accounting Strip Filters to focus on specific accounting strips at a time. Enter as many elements as you like and click Search. To clear filters, delete the elements entered and click Search again.
Navigating from page to page can be done using the Prev and Next buttons. To skip to a page, type the page number in the text box and press Enter.
Click the Excel icon in the Export section to export the Scenario into an Excel spreadsheet.
Click the Printer icon in the Export section to print the data.
If data has already been established in a spreadsheet, the information can be imported via the Import button directly from Excel.
a. Click Import, search for and select your CSV file. An Import CSV pop-up displays.
b. Before importation, be sure to title each column correctly. The system will match the information, but you must verify that each pull-down is correct.
c. Once complete, click Import CSV to transport data.
Click Filters to breakdown data.
a. To add more than one filter to a column, click the green plus sign.
b. To delete an additional filter, click the red minus sign.
c. For additional filtering options, click the gray arrow for a filter pull-down.
See Filters for more information.
You can also sort data by clicking on any of the headers. Click once for ascending results, click twice for descending.
To change the columns displayed on the screen, click Toggle Columns.
a. A Toggle Columns pop-up displays giving you the ability to clear the check box for each header column. Doing so will hide the columns from the screen.
b. To show hidden columns, be sure the box is selected.
Columns will stay hidden until reselected.