Add tabs (drivers)

Owned by Helen Gosper
Last updated: Apr 09, 2024 by Denise McGettigan
3 min read

Only the budget owner and administrators can add tabs to a budget workbook but other users can contribute to those tabs via the workflow.

When you create a budget workbook, it has one worksheet tab, the Main tab. You can add other tabs to the workbook to add more detail to the budget, either to have this information at hand in one central location or to drive budget values (read more about drivers below).

Types of tabs

You can add the following types of tabs to budget and forecast workbooks:

  • Manual Entry: This tab is a blank worksheet in which you can manually enter data. It doesn’t automatically drive budget values but you can reference its data in formulas in other tabs to drive values.

  • Lookup: This tab is similar to a Manual Entry tab (in that can manually enter data) but has a prebuilt dimension structure, entities inherited from another tab, and default data values you can edit. It doesn’t automatically drive budget values, but you can reference its data in formulas in other tabs to drive values.

  • Reference: This tab contains data from another Phocas database. It doesn’t automatically drive budget values, but you can reference its data in formulas in other tabs to drive values.

You can add the following types of tabs to budget workbooks only:

  • Database: This tab contains data from another Phocas database. Its structure is based on that of the Main tab, so it automatically drives items in the Main tab. You can also reference its data in formulas in other tabs to drive values.

  • Headcount: This tab contains a blank worksheet in which you can import or manually enter employee salary, bonus, and commission data, along with associated benefits, such as pensions and gym memberships. It automatically drives selected items in the Main tab. You can also reference its data in formulas in other tabs to drive values.

  • Balance Sheet: Available in financial budgets only, this tab contains your Balance Sheet budget. When adding this tab, you also have the option to include a Cash Flow budget, which is automatically derived and displayed in a separate tab. The inclusion of the Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow budgets in one budget workbook enables the 3-statement budgeting model.

Drivers

As mentioned above, some tabs drive budget values. Drivers, also referred to as assumptions, are used in most budgets. They are key business factors that influence financial performance, such as operational costs. These factors often change during the budgeting process, so managing them in additional tabs can be useful. Drivers act like powerful working lines. You do all the data entry budgeting in the driver tab and the data flows into the Main tab, sometimes automatically, as illustrated in the image below. When you make changes in the driver tab, the data in the Main tab updates accordingly. The use of driver tabs saves you a lot of time when it comes to updating budget data.