Users and data access
Learn about the users, data access and security in the Budgets & Forecasts module.
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Learn about the users, data access and security in the Budgets & Forecasts module.
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It's important to understand the types of users in the Budgets & Forecasts module and the factors that impact user access to the budget and forecast workbooks so you can complete your budgeting process efficiently and confidently.
Your organization should consider which individuals need to be involved in the budgeting process and what responsibilities they should have. This will determine what type of user role they’ll have in Budgets & Forecasts. The Budgets & Forecasts module has four types of users:
The budget owner is the user who creates the budget workbook. The owner controls the budget and its workflow and can perform all actions in the budget workbook. Ownership can be changed over time, as your business needs change.
To be a budget owner, you need these user permissions: Budgets & Forecasts and Manage Budgets & Forecasts.
The budget administrator is a user who can help the owner with workflow management and other tasks. Administrators can do more within the budget workbook than the other users (contributors). In addition to the standard data entry, administrators can change the budget owner to themselves, add comparison rows, assign tasks in the workflow (but not change the workflow baseline, which is the owner), and add and publish worksheet tabs.
To be a budget administrator, you need the following user permissions: Budgets & Forecasts and Manage Budgets & Forecasts. You also need to be added as an administrator in the budget workbook set up by the budget owner.
A budget contributor is a user who is responsible for entering and editing the values in the worksheets.
To be a budget contributor you need the Budgets & Forecasts user permission, and the budget owner or administrator must assign you to a task in the budget workflow.
The budget owner or administrators can add other users to a workbook as viewers. This type of user is useful if you want to allow one or more Phocas users to view the budget but not contribute to it (edit any values).
To be a budget viewer, you need the Phocas Viewer license, and the Budgets & Forecasts user permission.
As your organization's financial and budget information is sensitive, your Phocas administrator controls who can access the Budgets & Forecasts module and what data they can see there. This security gives you the freedom to share and assign work as required, without worrying about who can see what. The following factors impact user access to a budget or forecast workbook.
The Phocas user permissions are the first line of defense in your organization’s budget security. If you can’t access the Budgets & Forecasts module, you can’t edit any of the budgets or forecasts. Your Phocas administrator controls who can access the Budgets & Forecasts module and who can create budget and forecast workbooks.
The type of Budgets & Forecasts user you are determines the actions you can take within the module. For example, a budget administrator can publish a budget but a contributor cannot.
Even when you have permission to access the Budgets & Forecasts module, to see any data in a budget or forecast, you need access to the underlying database. In general, database permissions and restrictions are carried through to the budget, so you can only view rows (budget lines) for which you have permission.
As stated in the Types of users section above, your Phocas administrator controls who can access a database and what information they can see within that database. If the budget data comes from multiple databases, your administrator can control access to each database and set different restrictions for each. Restrictions can be customized at a fine level and applied to individuals or groups of users.
For example, your administrator can:
Set a default restriction on a database so that all users can see branch data but not company-wide data.
Apply specific database restrictions to individual users to ensure:
A regional manager only sees the budget items for their region (Australia) and not others (UK and USA).
The Warehouse Manager only sees the operating costs for their branch.
A member of the Sales team only sees the Gross Margin and higher-level information.
A user can access the Cost of Sales data in one database but not in another.
Even with the required user permission, data access, and data workbook access, you can only edit budget and forecast data when the budget owner or administrator assigns rows to you in the workflow.
When the Budgets & Forecasts module is enabled for your Phocas site, as an administrator, you need to:
Ensure the relevant users can access the Financial Statements module to view the completed financial budgets and forecasts.
A budget contributor can only be assigned to tasks in the headcount workflow if they have been added as headcount user. See for more information.
Assign the Viewer license. You can either do this for individual users on their or multiple users using the or on the Users page.
Assign the user a User Specific profile and select the Budgets and Forecasts user permission checkbox. See the and pages.
Ensure each user has access to the database(s) upon which the budgets and forecasts are based. See .
Administrators, see for more information.
Budget owners and administrators can restrict access to a whole workbook or specific tabs within a workbook. See and .
See and to learn more.
Update the relevant Phocas user accounts to allow the applicable users to access the Budgets & Forecasts module and manage the budgets and forecasts. See to learn about the two user permissions.
Ensure each user has applicable access to the database(s) upon which the budgets and forecasts are based. See and read the User access and data security section above.