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Filtered budgets

Owned by Denise McGettigan
Last updated: Jul 30, 2024
5 min read

A dimension is a level in your budget hierarchy and an entity is a value within a dimension. For example, a dimension is Country and the entities are Australia, the UK and the USA.

The creation of filtered budget workbooks gives you a lot of flexibility in how you approach your budgeting process. You can use filters alongside the copy workbook feature to quickly create multiple budgets from the same database, where the only difference is the filter that is applied. You can then work on each of those budget workflows separately, then publish them all into the same stream, without overwriting any data.

For example, in the following image, three separate budget workbooks were created using a budget filter on the Country dimension. Each of those budgets was then published into the same stream.

Create a filtered budget

In the budget setup, there are two filtering options that relate to the dimensions and entities in the underlying database.

1 Budget filter

The budget filter, sometimes called the budget-wide filter, applies a filter to one entity in one dimension.

As a result, the whole budget is filtered to display only the data for the selected entity, which is easy to see when you expand a row. The filter is displayed at the top of the worksheet for reference purposes.

In the following example, a budget filter is applied to create a budget workbook for the UK.

A budget filter is suitable when:

  • You want to create a simple budget for an entity, such as in the above examples.

  • You are budgeting on a project basis. You can create multiple budgets of the same budgeting model, one for each project.

  • Your organization acquires a new business during the year. You can create a separate budget for that business unit based on your current budget.

You can use comparison rows to bring additional information into a filtered budget. For example, if you create a budget for Australia, you might want to add data from the UK or USA for reference or comparative proposes.

2 Level filter

The level filter applies a filter to one or more entities in that dimension level. As a result, the level is displayed in the budget but only the selected entities are displayed underneath.

In the following example, a level filter is applied to create a budget workbook for the UK.

As you can see, the above example uses the same scenario as that in the budget filter example above, but the use of a different filtering option leads to different visual results.

The level filtering option is more suitable when you want to select a subset of entities. For example, suppose you have a Regional Manager who is responsible for four branches. You could create a budget just for that manager.

Use session filters

An alternative to creating a filtered budget is for your team to use session filters. They allow for a similar output to the budget filters described above, however, there are some key differences:

  • Users:

    • All users can apply session filters but budget filters must be set by the budget owner and administrators.

    • Session filters only apply to the user who applied them, whereas budget filters apply to all users.

  • Time: Session filters are temporary but budget filters are not. Session filters last for the session only, so you can change them without impacting the structure of the workbook. If you reload the budget or close and reopen a budget, you’ll lose the filters and see all the original data again.

Use comparison rows in a filtered budget

You can use comparison rows to bring additional information into the budget. For example, if you create a budget for the UK using a budget filter, you might want to add data from Australia for reference or comparative purposes.

Copy a filtered budget

If you apply a budget filter, when you copy the workbook, the Select budget filter setting allows you to select a different budget filter (dimension and/or entity) to apply to the new workbook.

If you apply a level filter, after you copy the workbook as usual, the new workbook will have the same level filter applied. You can then edit the setup of the new workbook to change the filter.

Publish a filtered budget

When you publish a budget workbook as a stream, only the relevant filtered dimension will populate (or overwrite) with new data. If you publish an unfiltered version of a budget workbook, you will overwrite all filtered uploads that you already made.

After you complete the workflow for each filtered budget and are ready to publish the budget data:

  1. Publish the first budget into a new stream, for example, Financial Budgets 2025.

  2. Publish the other budgets into the same stream that you created for the first budget (Financial Budgets 2025).

  3. Review the published budget data in Financial Statements. You need to customize your statement view to see the data.