Create a budget (Financial Statements)

Do you have the Budgets & Forecasts module? If so, create a Profit and Loss (P&L) budget from within your Financial Statements module and skip the manual setup process.

User permission: Manage Custom Statements

Sometimes referred to as the one-click budgeting feature, this is a quicker and easier way to create a budget workbook in the Budgets & Forecasts module. All the budget settings are automatically selected for you, allowing you to see the budget straight away. You can then modify the setup to suit your needs.

This feature is also a great learning tool, giving you a deeper understanding of how the data in your Financial Statements module is presented in the Budgets & Forecasts module and how the two products are linked. You can match the statement setup to the budget setup to see where the connections are without being overwhelmed by new settings and terminology. Even if you ultimately don't use the budget (you can delete it), you can become familiar with its structure and contents and how it ties back to the elements in your financial statement.

Prerequisites

This feature is available when you have the Budgets & Forecasts module. In addition to the Financial Statements > Manage Custom Statements user permission, you need both of the Budgets & Forecasts user permissions.

To put it simply, if you have permission to create budgets in Budgets & Forecasts, you'll also be able to create those budgets from within Financial Statements.

Create a budget

1. In Financial Statements, prepare the P&L statement:

   • Open a favorite that has the required setup or change your view of the Profit and Loss statement as required.

   • The setup of your statement directly impacts the setup of the budget, so the more you do here, the less you need to edit in Budgets & Forecasts later. The stream, measure, period, and other items you select here are used to create the budget structure. Any levels you add to the statement are also carried through to the budget.

2. Click Budgets > Create budget. The budget workbook is automatically created for you in the Budgets & Forecasts module, skipping the usual setup steps. It opens in a new browser tab.

3. Match the budget structure and contents to your financial statements setup to understand how the budget was created. Learn more about this in the next section.

   

Learn more: Match the financial statement to the budget setup

In the following image, you can see how the elements in the Profit and Loss (P&L) statement setup in Financial Statements are carried through to the budget workbook setup in Budgets & Forecasts. The matching elements have the same numbers and colors and are described below.

	Financial Statements: P&L setup	Budgets & Forecasts: Workbook setup
1	Database: The name of the financial database.	Database: The database upon which the budget is based and where the budget data will ultimately be published.
2	User: The signed-in user (your initials).	Budget Owner: The user who created the budget workbook (your name).
3	Statement: The type of statement, which is always a P&L statement. There might be several custom P&L statements to choose from.	Template: The particular P&L statement upon which the budget is based. This setting determines the layout of the budget.
4	Measure: The type of values that are displayed in the statement grid.	Measure: The type of values that are displayed in the budget grid.
5	Current (stream): The source of the current data. One database might have multiple streams to choose from.	Stream: The source of data used to populate the initial budget values.
6	Period: The timeframe for the financial period.	Period > Start and End: The start and end dates of the budget period.
7	Levels: An additional level in the statement that you can expand to view the information in more granular detail.	Levels: An additional level in the budget that you can expand to view the information in more granular detail.

Next steps

When your budget is created, you carry out the subsequent actions in the Budgets & Forecasts module:

1. Complete the budgeting process: See Create a budget (in Budgets & Forecasts) > Next steps.

2. Find your budget workbook: When you create a budget from within Financial Statements, it opens in a new browser tab. You can close this tab without worrying about saving the workbook anywhere. The workbook displays on your Budgets & Forecasts homepage (alongside any other workbooks to which you've access) so you can easily find it later. You’ll be able to identify your workbooks as they have the distinctive default name Profit and Loss created [date] and you are set as the owner. From here, you can open a workbook or delete any workbooks don’t need.

   
3. Add your budget stream to your financial statement: When the budget workflow is complete, the next step is to publish the budget and its additional tabs to a stream in the financial database so the data becomes available for use in the Financial Statements module. You can then add a budget package in Financial Statements to add the new budget to the Budgets menu.