Adding and Editing Budgets

Budgets and Forecasts > Budgets & Forecasts > Budgets

Warning - Before using this option it is important that either transactions have been entered in Sage for the current year, or a budget for at least one nominal account / department combination.  This is because the drop-down list of financial years at the top of the form derives data from Sage and and this must exist before it can be selected.

Before any budgets have been entered or imported the form will look like the example below:

Budgets

Budgets may be

  • Entered manually
  • Imported from Excel
  • If you have budgets in Sage, they may be imported from Sage
  • Existing budgets may be exported to Excel

To enter budgets manually:

  • Select the relevant financial year from the drop-down list at the top of the form. The choice will be either the current year, or the next financial year.  (Prior financial years will be available from the drop-down list, but these should be ignored.)
  • Select the nominal account from the drop-down list on the rows (or enter the code manually). The nominal description will be displayed for confirmation.
  • Select the department from the drop-down list on the rows (or enter the code manually). The department description will be displayed for confirmation.
  • You can either
    • Enter the budget for the full year in the ‘Annual’ column – the system will then ask if you want to spread the amount evenly over the full year; answer ‘Yes’ or:
    • Enter budget amounts in individual month columns. As you add each month the ‘Annual’ figure is updated.

Note: Income should be entered as negative.

To import budgets from Excel

You should first prepare the Excel spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet must have the following column headings on the first row:

  • Column A Department
  • Column B Nominal
  • Column C Description
  • Columns D to O Month01 to Month12 (note the leading 0 for months 1 to 9)
  • Column P Total

The other rules are

  • There should be no data in any column other than A to P.
  • Only rows with Department and Nominal columns populated will be imported. i.e. sub-total and total rows will be ignored.
  • If duplicates of Department/Nominal account exist, only the one with the higher row number will be imported.
  • Income may be entered on the spreadsheet as positive or negative, but will be converted to negative when imported.
  • Figures may be entered as numbers or formulae, but will be imported as numbers and rounded to the nearest whole number
  • Where rounding causes differences between the Total column and the sum of the months, the difference will be add/subtracted from Month12.

An example spreadsheet is shown below:

Budget Imprt

This information is available by clicking the ‘Import Help’ button.

To import the budget spreadsheet:

  • Make sure you have selected the correct financial year from the drop-down list at the top of the form.
  • Click Import from Excel. A message will be displayed stating the financial year you are going to import budgets for. Click ‘Yes’ to continue.
  • You will then be asked if you want to delete all the existing budget records for the financial year, effectively starting again, or whether you only want to add new and replace any existing records from the spreadsheet, leaving any records not on the spreadsheet in the budgets. Answer appropriately.
  • Browse to the location of the Excel spreadsheet and click ‘Open’.
  • A message is displayed giving a warning about the possibility of ‘conflicts’ – just click ‘OK’
  • Your spreadsheet should have income as negative; if not the import can reverse the sign for you. If your spreadsheet has income as positive, answer ‘Yes’ to reverse the sign, otherwise answer ‘No’.
  • The import will proceed followed by a message notifying you that it has been successful.

 To update budgets from Sage

In situations where you already have budgets in Sage and have changed to use budgets in Academy Reports, it makes sense to import the budgets from Sage.  To do this:

  • Select the financial year from the drop-down list at the top of the form.
  • Click ‘Update from Sage’.
  • A message will be displayed warning that any/all existing budgets for the selected financial year will be deleted and replaced by budgets from Sage. Click ‘Yes’ to continue.
  • Once complete a ‘Done’ message is displayed.

If no budgets are found in Sage for the selected financial year you will be warned that none exist and that no budgets have been imported

Export to Excel

Budgets held in Academy Reports can easily be exported to Excel.  To do this:

  • Select the financial year from the drop-down list at the top of the form.
  • Click ‘Export to Excel’.
  • Select the folder where you would like the file to be exported to and click ‘Export’.
  • After a few moments Excel will open showing the exported budget data.

Exiting Budgets

When you exit Budgets the system re-calculates and re-formats the budgets to make reporting against budgets as fast as possible.  This can take a little while and the system will appear to have stopped.  To keep you informed, a ‘progress’ message is displayed in the bottom left-hand corner of the form, showing you how many records need to be processed and how far the program has got.


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