Manually Entering a Budget

When creating budgets in PS Accounting, values need to be entered for all required nominals, ledger accounts and financial periods. This defines what the budget is being spent on (or what the budget is being received for), where the cost/income is being assigned and when the cost/income is predicted to be spent/received.

There are two ways that this can be achieved – manual entry or importing. This article describes how budget data can be manually entered.

Budget data is manually entered by selecting a nominal, then the required ledger account, entering a budget value for each period.

This can be more time consuming than importing, but enables each nominal, account and budget value to be meticulously entered as you proceed and as a consequence, reduces the risk of errors.

The process will need to be repeated from scratch each year because you can’t re-use the budget from the previous year.

1. From the Budget Maintenance dialog, highlight the newly created budget code, then click the Details button.
   
   
2. The Budget Detail Maintenance dialog is displayed. Check that the correct Budget code and financial Year are displayed in the drop-down lists – these can be changed if required.
   
3. Firstly, you need to select the nominal in the left-hand panel to determine what is being spent or received. In the previous example, LLL3205 – Gas has been selected.
   
4. Budget values are entered at account level, i.e. cost centre accounts, salary ledger accounts, trip ledger accounts, etc. The accounts available for selection are based on the ledger the nominal is linked to. In the following example, the nominal is linked to the LLL_COSTCTR ledger and consequently, all the cost centre accounts are available for selection.
   

5. Click the Accounts button to display the Account Budget Maintenance dialog.
   

   Ensure that any income is entered as a minus figure e.g. -1,000 will show an income of one thousand against the specified nominal and account.

6. Highlight the required ledger account in the left-hand panel, then enter the required Budget Value for each period. The previous graphic shows the budget values entered for LLL3205 – Gas nominal apportioned across 12 periods to the PUTL Premises – Utilities ledger account. If any other costs need to be added to another ledger account (for the same nominal), click the Save button and repeat the process as required. This might be required for a nominal where the costs are shared across two or more cost centres.
   
7. When you have finished adding budget values for this nominal, click the Cancel button to return to the Budget Detail Maintenance The previously entered budget values are then displayed. If multiple ledger accounts were selected in the previous step, then the Budget Value column will display the combined total.
   
   
8. Repeat this process for all the required nominals.

At any point during the process, you can produce a Budget Matrix report in the Reporting Suite (select Modules > Reporting Suite from the menu bar then click the Budget Matrix report). This report provides an overview of a budget by budget code. The following example shows the report produced for the budget data entered so far: