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If your organization has a large budget, you could create multiple, smaller budgets, then publish each one to the same stream. See the filter options below and Create and publish filtered budgets for more information.

1. Check to see if your Profit and Loss statement categorization is complete.

2. Get a clear understanding of how your organization currently budgets, and at what level of detail, then consider if you want to make changes to the current process. It is best to plan how you want to structure your budget before you create it. Right after you create the budget, you have the chance to change the workbook setup but when you edit any of the budget values, you will not be able to make many changes to the workbook setup.

3. Identify who needs to access the budget. All users who access the budget also need access to the Financial Statements module (to some degree) and permission to access the underlying database.

When you create a budget workbook, it opens on the Main worksheet tab. The layout and content of the budget is determined by your setup (configuration). In the case of a financial budget, the budget displays in the Profit and Loss template that you selected. The images below use colors to match the setup settings with the corresponding workbook elements.

1. In the Phocas menu, click Budgets and Forecasts, then click + Financial budget. If you don’t see this option, it means you don’t have permission to manage Budgets and Forecasts.

   

2. On the Budgets and Forecasts homepage,  

3. In the Budget setup screen, enter a name for the budget. For example, Budget 2024. 

4. Select the database on which to base the budget. The options correspond to the databases configured for your organization's Phocas site. You might have a financial database and non-financial options, such as a Sales or Purchasing database.

5. Select the Profit and Loss (P&L) statement template to apply to the budget. This setting determines the layout of the budget. The options available depend on the types of Profit and Loss statements your organization has created in the Financial Statements module. If your organization only uses one Profit and Loss template, it will be applied by default.

6. Change the budget owner, if required. By default, you are the budget owner, as you are creating the budget. Typically, you would leave this as is but you can select another user if you want to delegate the workflow management to them.

7. Add other budget administrators, if required. By default, you are a budget administrator, as you are creating the budget. You can add other users as administrators to help you manage the workflow. Ensure the selected administrators have full access to the database on which the budget is based.

8. Set the budget hierarchy. This setting determines how many levels of data are in the budget and how those levels are ordered. In other words, the hierarchy determines how the various dimensions in the database are grouped in the budget.

   • In a financial budget, the first level (dimension) is always the Profit and Loss category, such as Income or Revenue. The last level is always the General Ledger account code and this is where the workflow sits. You cannot change these two levels but you can select up to four additional levels to sit between them.

   • You can apply a filter to a level, to create the budget for a specific dimension. See Create and publish filtered workbooks for more information on this method of budgeting.

   • Depending on how many levels you add here, you might be able to add more levels when your budget workbook is created. The maximum number of levels any budget can have is six.

9. (Optional) Add a budget filter. This setting allows you to filter the whole budget for a specific entity. For example, suppose your organization operates in three countries but you only want to create a budget for one of them, the UK. You can add a filter for the Country dimension and select the UK entity. See Filter the budget for more information.

10. Click Next.                                   

11. Select the period type for the budget: Year, Month or Custom.  You only have the custom option if these custom periods exist in your Financial Statements, for example, quarterly.

12. Select the date range for the budget. For example, from April 2023 to March 2024. You can create a budget up to -3 years from the current date.

13. Select how you want to populate the budget initially:

    • Stream - Populate the budget with values from an existing stream of data in the database, as a starting point that you can later adjust. For example, you could use your current year's actuals from your financial database or the previous year’s budget values.

    • Zeros - Populate the budget with zeros, so you can start with a clean slate.

14. (Stream values only) Adjust the default Stream settings, as required:

    • Baseline (stream) - A default stream is selected for you but you can select another stream from whatever is available in the database.

    • Measure - A default measure is selected for you but you can select another measure from whatever is available in the database, such as Local Value or Reporting Value.

    • Offset - If you're budgeting by year, the offset defaults to -1 and if you’re budgeting by month, the offset defaults to -12. You can change this offset as required.

      • For example, if you are creating a budget for the period of April 2022 to March 2023, the actuals will be for the 12 months commencing April 2021 (the budget for April 2022 will include April 2021 data). If, for example, you want to build a budget based on an existing budget stream, you could select an offset of 0.

      • If you’re partway through the year and therefore, your actuals don’t yet include the entire year’s data, you’ll see a warning note telling you the actuals are slightly out of range. Any months not yet completed will populate with zeros in the workbook. For example, if you are currently in November 2020, the December 2021 budget will populate as zeros because December 2020 currently has no activity. You do not need to take any action here. When you get to the workbook, you can enter data manually in the zeros cells, copy forward data from the other months as a starting point, or use a comparison row to reference another stream.

15. Click Save and Finish. 

16. Explore your new budget workbook. If required, make changes to your budget workbook setup before you edit any of the budget values.

17. Proceed to assign the budget rows to various people in your organization using the workflow.