D365 Budgeting Cookbook (Part 1 of 3).

Basic budgeting
Posted on13.07.2017CategoriesAX7, Microsoft Dynamics AX
Since budgeting aim is planning, control and analysis cash flows, in this post I’d like
to go through one of the stages of financial planning: creation, allocation and usage
of financial resources of the company on the example of cost budget.

In AX budgeting consists of 4 main components:

 Basic budgeting
 Budgeting register entries
 Budget planning
 Budget control
In this example, we will be creating Cost budget manually (fixed costs) through Basic
Budgeting and Budget Register Entries. And then we will compare actual and
forecasted (budgeting) results in order to assess the effectiveness of operations.

Basic Budgeting requires Basic Budgeting configuration. This configuration includes

the following:

Configure Budgeting Parameters

Define currency exchange rate

Identify Budget models. Budget model it’s type of the company’s budget (budget of
expenses, sales budget, or budget of payments). Company might have several
budget models and they can from a complex tree structure. Each model might have
sub models and those sub models might have their own sub models and so on. The
number of level is unlimited.

Setup Budget cycles

Setup Budget code for each Budget Type. Identify Default Budget code.

Identify Financial dimensions that will be used for Budgeting. Further we will be
transferring budget amounts either to or from them.  This is essentially the
combinations financial dimensions who could hold budget amounts.

Identify Main accounts that will be used for Budgeting. Further we will be
transferring budget amounts either to or from them.

Setup budget allocation terms. This is an optional setup. It’s used to define the
financial dimension values and the percentage that will be used to generate
allocations in budget account entries for budget register entries.  In general, budget
allocation terms is used to split the budget into small pieces. For instance, budget for
the period you could split into smaller periods or distribute general administrative
expenses by departments, cost centers and other dimensions in any combination.
Configure Budget workflow (in case if Budget register entries requires approval).
Assign Budget workflow to Budget code. This is an optional setup.

Now let’s jump into AX and look at the settings.

Go to Budgeting > Setup > Basic budgeting > Budgeting Parameters

Go to Budgeting > Setup > Basic Budgeting > Dimensions for budgeting
Go to Budgeting > Setup > Basic Budgeting > Budget Models
Go to Budgeting > Setup > Basic Budgeting > Budget Codes
Go to Budgeting > Setup > Budget Planning > Budget cycles
Go to Budgeting > Setup > Basic Budgeting > Budget allocation terms
Go to Budgeting > Setup > Basic Budgeting > Budget transfer rules
If you see the error message: No budget transfers are allowed outside of these rule
lines unless you use workflow to approve the transfer. If no criteria are specified,
then the rule applies to all dimension values, select Use rules for budget transfers in
the Budget parameters form.
Once we did all the settings we can enter budget data into Budget Register Entries
form.

Navigate to Budgeting > Budget register entries.

Click New button
Specify Transaction date: the date when Budget will be posted

Select Budget Model created beforehand

Select Budget Cycle created beforehand

As far as we are creating budget for the Administrative costs let’s create the
following budget items:

– costs of operating and maintaining buildings (electricity/gas/water bills),

– grounds and equipment

– depreciation

– general and departmental administrative salaries and expenses

– library costs.

In the Budget account entries section click Add line button

Select Account structure within your legal entity
Select Account in the Dimension values field
Select dimension in the Dimension values field: for which business unit, department,
cost center this budget is.
Specify Budget amount

Select Amount type

You can enter all budget items manually or you can use one of the allocation ways.

From here we have several options how we can allocate budget amount:

1. Recurring entry. Amount is divided equally through each period. For instance,
rent, leases, insurance, interest lost
2. Allocate periods. Breaking out the budget amounts by period keys, predefined
beforehand. Moreover, it allocates based on the percentages that you’ve set
up in period key.
3. Allocate dimension. Amount allocated by different percentage to different
financial dimensions.
Let’s look at each allocation method in details.

Recurring entry.
Highlight budget line that you’d like to allocate and click Enter recurrence.
Specify the Interval and Interval type: Is it Days, Months, Years

Specify the Expiration date: End date of the allocation

Click Create

Allocate periods.
Before you can use this method of allocation you should complete the pre-requisites.

Go to General ledger > Ledger setup > Period allocation categories

Highlight necessary allocation key and click Lines
Based on the Allocation percentage we are going to allocate our budget amount

Switch back to budget register entries

Highlight the budget item and click Allocate across periods

Select Period allocation key and click Allocate

Allocate to dimensions.
Highlight the budget item and click Allocate to dimensions
Select Budget allocation terms predefined earlier and click Allocate

Once you’ve filled in the budget, you need to finalize this budget by clicking on the
Update budget balances on the top. And now, what we have is we have budgets for
a specific main account and for a specific department.  When you use the dimension
value combinations on transactions and these dimension value combinations exist in
your budget, AX will let you know if you are exceeding your budget.
D365 Budgeting Cookbook (Part 2 of 3).
Budget control
Posted on06.08.2017CategoriesAX7, Microsoft Dynamics AX
We have already discussed Basic budgeting D365 Budgeting Cookbook (Part 1 of 3).
Basic budgeting.
In today’s post I will be describing Budget control functionality.

This is an important feature designated you to control of excesses the allocated

budget. This allows you to monitor the availability of funds as well as to prevent
additional activities (entering data, postings) in case if consumable budget exceeds
threshold (it could be done through warnings and error messages).

The budget control system includes functions for budget planning, entering, updating
and carrying forward budget, as well as availability control.

You should define the following settings in the Budget control configuration.

Define parameters. This fast tab is used for:

 to define the dimensions and the main accounts. For specified dimensions and
main accounts, you will run the budget check.
 to define the intervals and time spans
 to define thresholds
Over budget permissions. To determine a group for over budget.
Budget funds available. From here we need to define what will be the Budget funds
available for the system. Some amounts we sum, such as original budget, a budget
revision. And some amounts we subtract, such as actual expenditures and unposted
actual expenditures.  In other word, we need to define the formula to calculate the
Budget funds available.
Documents and journals. You need to define the source documents where you will
run the budget check.
Assign budget models.
Define budget control rules. You might need to define specific combinations of
financial dimension that have been determined for the budget control. Those
combinations are subject to budget control.
Select Main accounts. If case if you haven’t selected main accounts as a budget
control dimension on the ‘Define parameters’ fast tab you might have the ability to
configure main accounts for budget control in the ‘Select main accounts’ fast tab to
enforce budget control rules.
Come down to ‘Select main accounts’ fast tab you will see all available main accounts
that are included within chart of accounts.

Select main account that are subject to budget control. You might select either all
main accounts or range of main accounts. In general, you might select as many
accounts as needed.

Once you’ve determined the list of main accounts, AX is going to run a budget
control check for those, unless you’ve configured something different within budget
control rules on the ‘Define budget control rules’ fast tab.

Define budget groups. When budget groups are defined, budget checking occurs at
the dimension combination detail level and at the budget group level.  This is an
optional setup, so if no criteria is specified, then the rule applies to all dimension
values.
Define message levels. Define the user groups that will be suppressing budget
control warning messages. Those users will continue receiving error messages based
on their over budget permissions, but they will not receive warning message.
In case if your user combines several duties, once you define the user group in the
‘Define message level’ fast tab, which is not defined in the over budget user group,
user will no longer receive warning messages.

Activate budget control. To put budget control into effect you have to activate
budget control configuration by clicking Active button. Once you activate it, budget
check will be started.
Navigate to Budgeting > Setup > Budget control > Budget control configuration

Switch to the Define parameters fast tab

Switch to the Over budget permissions fast tab
Switch to the Budget funds available fast tab

Switch to the Documents and journals fast tab

Switch to the Assign budget models fast tab

Switch to the Define budget control rules fast tab

Switch to the Select main accounts fast tab

Switch to the Define budget groups fast tab

Switch to the Define message levels fast tab

Switch to the Activate budget control fast tab

Once you click Activate button, ‘Activate budget control configuration’ dialog box
pops up
Let’s go to the All purchase orders and create purchase order that is over our budget

Create new Purchase order with the line

Check Distributed amounts by clicking Financials – > Distribute amounts

With this we will see the financial dimensions

Then let’s perform the budget check by clicking Financials -> Perform budget
checking

Since we exceeded budget, you will see an error message as well as Budget check
result field will be marked with red ‘X’
You can open Budget check errors and warning form to look at the amounts that
have been exceeded.

To look at what was in our budget, either click on the Budget control statistics and
verify Budget funds available
Or

click on the Budget control statistics by period

Once you decrease Qty (Net amount) of your purchase order to be less or equal to
Budget funds available and perform budget check again you will not see any error
messages.
You will see green mark at the Budget check result field
D365 Budgeting Cookbook (Part 3 of 3).
Budget planning
Posted on06.01.2018CategoriesAX7, Microsoft Dynamics AX
We have already discussed Basic budgeting (D365 Budgeting Cookbook (Part 1 of 3).
Basic budgeting) and Budget control (D365 Budgeting Cookbook (Part 2 of 3). Budget
control). And now it’s time to review the most sophisticated part – Budget planning.
With budget planning functionality you can achieve the following:

 Consolidation the multiple budget plans from a lower level into a single parent
budget plan at a higher level in the organization.
 Developing a single budget plan at a higher level of the organization and
allocation the budget to lower levels of the organization.
The final step of the budget planning is to generate the Budget register entry based
on budget plan.

In today’s post, we will develop a single budget plan, allocate amounts to the
multiple budget plans at the lower level, aggregate the multiple budget plans from a
lower level into a single parent budget plan at a higher level in the organization.

Budget planning requires Budget planning configuration. This configuration includes

the following:
First off we need to imagine the budget hierarchy that we will be using for the
Budget planning.

For budget planning we will be using the sales organizational structure. In our case
we will have 2 organizational levels: Head Marketing & Sales at the first level, Europe
Regional Sales department, Asia Regional Sales department and America Regional
Sales department at the second level. Let’s call them as Head Office level and Sales
department level.

To use our own organizational hierarchy with the budget planning we will need to
assign newly created hierarchy to the budget planning purpose.

To accomplish all of that, first we will create our Departments.

Navigate to Organization administration > Organizations > Internal organizations

Click the New internal organization button.

Select Department and click OK.

Create 4 departments described above.

Navigate to Organization administration > Organizations > Organization hierarchies

Create a new organization hierarchy that will be used for budget planning by clicking
New button.

Enter the name

and assign a budgeting purpose by clicking Assign purpose button.

Select Budget planning purpose from the left-hand side.

And then click Add button.
In the opened form select created earlier Organization hierarchy and click OK.
Open created hierarchy by clicking View hierarchy button

Go into the edit mode by clicking Edit button

Click Insert button and chose Department

Choose Head Marketing & Sales department and click OK.

Underneath the Head Marketing & Sales department, click Insert -> Department and
select created earlier departments.
Publish the created hierarchy by clicking Publish button and specifying Effective date.

Once you publish it, you will see an Infolog message

Next one we need to identify what stages will be at Head Office level and at the Sales
Department level.

Budget planning stages identify the steps that a budget plan goes through from
inception to final approval.

Let’s look at the workflow of our budget planning

Headquarter will create baseline base on the previous year sales, multi-year
contracts. Then it will be distributed to each sales department for the estimation.
Sales department will adjust budget plan if needed and submit budget amount. Once
sales departments submit budget amounts it will be sent back to headquarter. All
amounts will be aggregated and will be sent for budget manager’s review. Budget
manager adjusts budget plan if needed. This flow ends up reviewing and the final
approval by CFO.

Based on the description above we need to create the stages.

Navigate to Budgeting module > Setup > Budget planning > Budget planning
configuration.

Switch to the Stages tab.

Click Add
Type in a name in the Budget planning stage and a description in the Description
field.

Based on the workflow above we need to create the following stages:

Next one, we need to configure Budget planning scenarios. It is a result of each

stage. Let’s create scenarios for our case.
Navigate to Budgeting module > Setup > Budget planning > Budget planning
configuration

Switch to the Scenarios tab.

Click Add

Type in a name in the Budget planning scenario and a description in the Description
field.

Specify the Unit of measure as Monetary.

Next one is Budget plan workflow creation.

We will create 2 workflows first one is for High level department (in our case it’s
Head Sales & Marketing), second one is for Lower level departments (in our case it’s
Regional Sales Departments).

Let’s create Regional Sales Departments workflow. In this case sales department will
approve budget plan and submit this budget plan to the headquarter, where it will
be aggregated (in High level workflow)

Navigate to Budgeting module > Setup > Budget planning > Budgeting workflows

Create new workflow by clicking New button and selecting Budget plan workflows
type.
Budget plan workflow for child budget plans will be the following:

Click Properties button

Highlight Approve budget plan element and click Basic settings

Change Name
Double-click on Departments approval workflow elements

Highlight Step 1 and click Properties

Change Name, Work item subject and Work item instructions
Switch to the Assignment tab and select Participant
Switch to the Role based and select Security role participants in the type of
participants and select System administrator in the Participant.

Note: In our case it will be difficult to approve everything under different roles/users,
so on each stage I am going to select System administrator so I will be able to
approve everything under my own user.
Switch to the Completion policy and chose Single approver
Close Properties form and go back to the Level up

Highlight Stage transition budget plan task and click Basic settings

Change the Name

Once you’ve done, make sure that there are no errors
Click Save and Close

Type in Version notes and click OK

Select Activate the new version and click OK

Make sure that new workflow has been created and activated.
Now let’s create a second workflow for the Headquarter level.

Let’s quickly review what we have built

1 – Activation of budget plan

2 – Distribution amounts from Headquarter to Sales departments (at this step 3

budget plans for sales departments will be created)

3 – Review budget plan and approval

4 – Aggregation estimated amounts by sales departments (at this step 3 budget plans
reviewed and adjusted by sales departments aggregated back to Headquarter
budget plan)

5 – Stage transition from HBaseline stage to Aggregated

6 – Allocation across periods on the Headquarter budget plan

7 – Stage transition from Aggregated stage to BMReviewed

8 – Stage transition from BMReviewed stage to CFOReviewed stage

9 – Final approval
Note: Each stage transition can be visible on budget plan itself.
Highlight Review budget plan and click Properties

Switch to the Assignment and chose Participant

Specify the role on the Role based tab
Highlight Approve budget plan task, click Properties and change the Name
Highlight Step1 and click Properties. Change instructions as well as assignment.
Set Single approver on the Completion policy tab
Change the workflow properties
We ended up having two workflows
Configure workflow for headquarter

Configure workflow for sales departments

Create Allocation schedule for ‘Distribute to departments’

Create Stage allocation for ‘Distribute to departments’

Create Allocation schedule for ‘Aggregated from departments’
Create Stage allocation for ‘Aggregated from departments’
Create Allocation schedule for ‘Allocate across periods’
Create Stage allocation for ‘Allocate across periods’
Configure budget planning process
Once you are ready with the Budget planning process, you have to Activate it. Only
after Budget planning activation, users can create budget plans and submit them to
workflow for updates, reviews and approvals.
Click on Action button on the top

Click on Activate button

Now we are going to limit the user’s access to the budget plans. We will use the
configuration based on the security.

Navigate to the Budget planning configuration > Parameters tab and select Security
model = Based on the security organizations

If you are using this option you need to perform the following additional settings:

1. Assign budget planning organization hierarchy to a purpose of security

 2. Grant access to user
Follow the steps below to complete the setups above

Go to Organization administration > Organizations > Organization hierarchies

Click Assign purpose

Select ‘Security’ purpose and add that purpose to your organization hierarchy as
presented below

Now go to System administration > Users > Users

Select the user that need access to budgeting

Click Edit

Select the role to whom you would like to grant the access

Click Assign organizations button

Select Grant access to specific organizations individually

In the Select organization hierarchy drop-down, select the organization hierarchy

Note: Only organization hierarchies that have Security purpose assigned will be

displayed in the drop-down list.

Highlight the highest node

Click Grant link

Let’s grant the access to this user to all organization hierarchy nodes
Note: Keep in mind that since we were given an access to the System user role, there
might be any other users in the system with Grant access to all organizations. If you
do not change it, during budget plan approval the system will be creating additional
approval steps for those users. So be careful when granting the access.
Let’s now review how we can create and manage our budget plans based on the
information that we already have set up within our budget planning configuration
and our budget planning processes.

First, we need to create budget plan for previous year actuals and multi-year
contracts and use it as our baseline.

Budget plan is a document that consists of a budget plan header and budget plan
lines. In the system you can have more than 1 budget plan depend on your budget
planning cycle.
Previous year actuals: we will generate automatically based on the GL, but first we
will create the budget plan (only budget plan header)

Navigate to Budgeting > Budget plans

Click New
Select Budget planning process

Note: Only activated budget planning processes will be displayed in the drop-down

list
Specify the Budget plan name
We have created the budget plan header and now we need to add budget plan lines.
Budget plan lines can be either created manually or automatically (since now budget
planning was integrated with the ledger, fixed assets and so on).

In our case Previous year actuals will consist of Expenses and Revenue, so are going
to run Generate budget plan from general ledger twice. First time for expenses,
second time for revenue.
Navigate to Budgeting > Periodic > Generate budget plan from general ledger
In the Action field select Update the existing budget plan scenario, and append new
data (since we have already created the budget plan header)
In the Source section provide the following data:
In the Fiscal year field select the year from which you would like to take the
amounts. We are creating budget plan for 2018, so for previous year sales it will be
2017
In the From period field select Period 1
In the To period field select Period 12
In the Account type select Expense
In the Target section provide the following data
Set the Historical flag to Yes
In the Budget planning process field select your budget planning process
In the Document number field select the budget plan created earlier
In the Budget class field select Expense
In the Budget plan scenario select Previous year sales

Once you are done, click on Generate button

Once budged plan generation from general ledger is completed, navigate to budget
plan and review the budget plan lines

Navigate to Budgeting > Periodic > Generate budget plan from general ledger
In the Action field select Update the existing budget scenario, and append new
data (since we have already created the budget plan header)
In the Source section provide the following data:
In the Fiscal year field select the year from which you would like to take the
amounts. We are creating budget plan for 2018, so for previous year sales it will be
2017
In the From period field select Period 1
In the To period field select Period 12
In the Account type select Revenue
In the Target section provide the following data
Set the Historical flag to Yes
In the Budget planning process field select your budget planning process
In the Budget class field select Revenue
In the Budget plan scenario select Previous year sales

Click on Generate button

Note: In case if there are no records in GL for selected criteria, the error message will
be displayed: The selection criteria that were used did not include any records to
generate. Update the selection criteria, and then try again.
Wait for the following Infolog message
Navigate to the Budget plan and review the created records. As you can see the lines
have been populated for all of the accounts that we have selected.

For multi-year contracts information, we can use generate budget plan from budget
plan feature, if your multi-year contracts were entered in the budget plan for the
previous year.

I have shown you how to generate budget plan, but in my example, I am going to
create the budget plan manually, since I do not have information for regional sales
departments from previous year.

I will work with the following budget plan:

Pay attention to the Budget planning stage. Right now, it’s HBaseline – the first step
in our workflow.

In the future, our parent budget plan will go thought the following stages: HBaseline
> Aggregated > BMReviewed > CFOReviewed.

Our child budget plans will go thought the following stages: SDEstimated >
SDSubmitted

Once you are ready, go ahead and submit the workflow.

Type in the comment and click Submit button

To review to whom the workflow is assigned, click on Workflow -> View history

From the workflow history, we can see that 2 tasks have been already completed.
1 – Budget plan is activated

2 – Budget amounts distributed to departments. At this point, 3 additional budget

plans for sales departments have been created. Sales departments can go to their
plan, estimate the forecast amounts and approve the budget plan.

If you go to Budget plan list, you will see 3 budget plans created:

 Plan for America Sales

 Plan for S.Asia Sales
 Plan for Europe Sales
We need to adjust those plans and submit for approval. Pay attention to the Budget
planning stage, it’s SDEstimated. After approving it, it will be changed to
SDSubmitted.

Go inside each plan and populate Forecast by Sales department field

Next on is for Asia

At last one is for Europe

After that you need to highlight the plan and click on Workflow -> Approve
Type in the comment and then Approve button

Repeat these steps for the rest child budget plans

After approving those, go ahead and accept parent budget plan

Click on Workflow – > Accept

Type in the comment and click Accept

Then click Complete

Type in the comment and click Complete

If you look at the Budget planning stage after Completion of Review task, it will be
changed from ‘HBaseline’ to ‘Aggregated’, then to ‘BMReviewed’ and then to
‘CFOReviewed’

And if you go to the history, you will notice that the following tasks have been
completed:

 Budget planning stage allocation

 Stage transition budget plan
 Budget planning stage allocation
 Stage transition budget plan
Approval budget plan task is Pending
All completed tasks mean that sales departments estimated amount have been
aggregated from child budget plan and added to the parent budget plan (this you can
see from filled column Forecast by Sales Department)

Go to Workflow and Approve the budget plan

Type in the comment and click Approve

Wait until workflow is completed and check the Workflow status.

MSDyn365FO: Deep dive into Budget planning.
Columns and Layouts
Posted on05.09.2018CategoriesBudgeting, Microsoft Dynamics AX
I have received a bunch of questions about Budget planning with its logic and I am
planning to deep dive into one scenario with focusing on Layouts and Columns.

Business scenario:
We have just 4 departments as depicted below.

Finance Planning and Analysis Department being on top of all the other
departments: Operations, IT Department, and HR

From a process perspective, following is what we have envisioned.

1. Generate a Parent Budget Plan from 2017 transactional data for just 1 ledger
Account (600150) + Departure financial dimension combination (104,105,106)
in to Initial Baseline Column
2. Submit the workflow and copy it to Estimated By FP&A Column.
3. Adjust Estimated By FP&A Column by 1 %
4. Distribute it to the Departments in to 3 separate Child Department Budget
Plans. Display distributed amount in 4 different columns:
 Departure Forecast Q1,
 Departure Forecast Q2
 Departure Forecast Q3
 Departure Forecast Q4
 Departure Forecast Total
5. Get Child budget plan adjusted by 1% by the Departments and then approved
by the Departments
6. Receive them back in to the Parent Plan in an Aggregated form. Display
aggregated amounts in 4 different columns:
 Departure Estimate Q2
 Departure Estimate Q3
 Departure Estimate Q4
 Departure Estimate Q5
7. Copy aggregated amount into Budget manager approved column to adjust and
approve it by Budget Manager
8. Copy aggregated amount into CFO approved column to adjust and approve it
by CFO
 9. Have it Reviewed By the Budget Manager and adjusted if needed
10.Have it Reviewed By the CFO and adjusted if needed
Let’s get the ball rolling…

Budget plan scenarios

Think of Budget plan scenarios as of containers with the data at the specific stage.

We will comprise of the following budget plan scenarios:

Previous year: in this container we will store amounts from previous year. In will be
Initial baseline – starting point for the budgeting.
Estimated by HQ: in this container we will store amounts from previous year and this
amount will be adjusted by Headquarter and later on distributed to the
departments.
Departure forecast: in this container we will store amounts distributed from HQ.
Departure estimate: in this container we will store amounts adjusted by
departments.
Approved by Budget manager: in this container we will store amounts to be
reviewed by Budget manager.
Approved by CFO: in this container we will store amounts to be reviewed by CFO.
Budget planning stages
We came up with the following budget planning stages:

Initial baseline: at this stage we will receive amounts from previous year and it is the
initial stage when parent budget plan is created.
Departure estimated: at this stage child budget plans are created.
Copied: at this stage we will copy previous year amounts into Estimated column to
be adjusted by HQ.
Departure submitted: at this stage child budget plans adjusted and approved.
Aggregated: at this stage amounts aggregated into parent budget plan.
Reviewed by Budget manager: at this stage amounts will be reviewed by budget
manager.
Reviewed by CFO: at this stage amounts will be reviewed by CFO.

Budget planning workflow stages

We will have 2 workflows:

 Department workflow (Dep-Budget-Plan)

 Headquarter workflow (FinanceV2)
Below you might find the stages for the Department workflow
And the stages for the Headquarter workflow

Stage allocations
Initial baseline stage – Copied Estimated allocation: we will copy previous year
amounts into Estimated by HQ column.
Copied stage – Allocate across departments: we will copy data from the Estimated
by HQ column and allocate them into 4 departure forecast columns. This information
will be used as a base for the distribution to the department, but also will be visible
on the parent budget plan.
Copied stage – Distribution: we will distribute previous year amounts from parent
budget plan into child budget plan. If we don’t do it, Previous year column will be
blank on the Child budget plan.
Copied stage – Distribution forecast: we will distribute estimated by HQ amount
from parent budget plan into child budget plan. If we don’t do it, Estimated by HQ
column will be blank on the Child budget plan.
Copied stage – Distribute departure forecast: we will distribute departure
forecasted amounts from parent budget plan into child budget plan. If we don’t do it,
4 Forecasted columns will be blank on the Child budget plan.
Aggregated stage – Aggregated budget manager: we will aggregate amounts from
child budgets to the parent budget into Approved budget manager column. This
information will be used as a base for the adjustment by Budget manager.
Aggregated stage – Aggregated from Departments: we will aggregate amounts from
child budgets to the parent budget into 4 department estimated columns. This needs
to be done in order to see in the parent budget plan what was initially forecasted
and what was estimated by departments.
Reviewed by Budget manager stage – Allocate across periods CFO: we will copy
data from the Approved by Budget manager column and allocate it into CFO
approved column. This information will be used as a base for the adjustment by CFO.

Allocation schedules
Copied Estimated allocation. This allocation schedule will be used at the Initial
baseline stage and we will copy previous year amounts into Estimated by HQ column.
Period key 40 means that we will copy data without changes.

We will take the data from Previous year container and copy into Estimated by HQ
container.

Allocate across departments. This allocation schedule will be used at the Copied

stage and we will copy data from the Estimated by HQ column and allocate them
into 4 departure forecast columns.
Distribution: we will distribute previous year amount from parent budget plan into
child budget plan.
Distribution forecast: we will distribute estimated by HQ amount from parent
budget plan into child budget plan.
Distribute departure forecast: we will distribute departure forecasted amounts from
parent budget plan into child budget plan.
Aggregated budget manager: we will aggregate amounts from child budgets to the
parent budget into Approved budget manager column.
Aggregated from Departments: we will aggregate amounts from child budgets to
the parent budget into 4 department estimated columns. This needs to be done in
order to see in the parent budget plan what was initially forecasted and what was
estimated by departments.
Allocate across periods CFO: we will copy data from the Approved by Budget
manager column and allocate it into CFO approved column. This information will be
used as a base for the adjustment by CFO.
Columns
This setup is used to define the columns that will be available in the budget plans. In
our scenario we will have the following columns:

For each column you have to define from which container (scenario) you would like
to take and display the data in the column.
Initial baseline column will be populated once you generate parent budget plan.
Upon budget plan generation you will specify the scenario where you would like to
store the data and as the result here we will take that scenario to display amounts.

Once we submit Parent budget plan workflow, we will copy amounts from Initial
baseline column into Estimated by FPY1 column. Later on HQ can adjust Estimated by
FPY1 amounts and those amounts will be used for the distribution to the
departments.
We will have 4 departure forecasted columns (Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4). These columns will be
populated once HQ approve workflow after adjustments of the Estimated by FPY1
amounts.

Departure forecasted total column will display total amount of departure forecasted
columns (Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4).
We will have 4 departure estimated columns (Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4). These columns will be
populated once child budget plans have been approved.  As the result we will see:

departure forecasted columns – what was initially forecasted

departure estimated columns – what was estimated by departments

Budget manager approved column will be used to adjust estimated amounts by
department. This column will be populated once we approve child budget plan and
those amounts in the aggregated form will be set in this column.
CFO approved column will be used to adjust department estimated amounts by CFO.
This column will be populated once we approve child budget plan and those
amounts in the aggregated form will be set in this column.

Layouts
This is a configuration of columns that will be displayed in the budget plan.
Continued…

Below you can find the budget planning process setup.

Budget plan workflows
In order to cover this scenario, two workflows have been created.
Headquarter workflow presented below
Department workflow presented below
We are done with the configuration. Let’s review the process itself.

Generate budget plan from general ledger:

Parent budget plan has been created.

Open parent budget plan and review the amounts transferred from 2017 year from
600150 account.
As you can see the list of columns based on the Layout.

Submit the workflow.

Notice that stage has been changed from Initial baseline to Copied. At this point we
have copied amounts from Initial baseline into Estimated by FP column.

You might notice that child budget plans already created, but if you open child plan it
will be blank. It’s because distribution of the amount didn’t happen yet.
Go back to the parent budget plan. Keep in mind that Refresh of the form will not
refresh the data, you will have to reload the page.

You will notice that amounts were copied and you can adjust it.

We will slightly adjust it.

Click Workflow -> Complete.

Don’t forget to refresh the form / reload the page.

Once workflow task executed, Estimated by FP column allocated across periods and
Forecasted columns are populated.

At this stage, amounts from parent budget plan will be distributed into child budget
plans.
Adjust amounts in the Child budget plan 1.

Adjust amounts in the Child budget plan 2.

Adjust amounts in the Child budget plan 3.

Click Approve for each of 3 budget plans.

Wait until approval.

Review the status of the child budget plans. It should be approved.

Refresh the form / Reload the page.

Go to the Parent budget plan and Complete workflow. After that all amount from
Child budget plan will be aggregated.

Review the parent budget parent plan.

As you can see the first 7 columns remain the same, but the last 6 columns display
aggregated amounts from Child budget plans.
Adjust the CFO approved column.

Click Approve.
If you need additional approval step by Budget manager, you just simply need to add
this task into Headquarter workflow.

Review the status of the Budget plans.