Master the Financial Budgets tool & control spend like never before

iCompleat’s powerful Financial Budgets tool gives you the ability to track and manage budget spend down to line-level, empowering purchasers to take confident, accountable spending decisions without waiting on finance.

One single financial budget can track multiple nominal values against a tracking code over a period up to a year, providing key members of your team with clear and detailed insights into spend.

Key features:
•    Budget checking at line level upon purchasing and approving
•    Track up to 3 nominal types, and limitless nominal values
•    Quickly adjust budget allocations as needs shift
•    One budget, tracking everything, in one place

In this guide, we show you how to use the Financial Budgets tool to create, manage, and track your send.

Masterclass replay

Jump into a mini Financial Budgets masterclass!

This replay of our session on Financial Budgets from our popular Lunch & Learn series takes you on a handy whistlestop tour of the feature, including how to set it up and make the most out of every feature.

Configuring Financial Budgets

There are a couple of settings that iCompleat Administrators need to configure behind the scenes to determine how iCompleat handles financial budgets in certain scenarios.

Switch on Financial Budgets

First, switch on Financial Budgets so it's available to use in your iCompleat company.

1. On the iCompleat homepage, click Configuration.
2. Click Product features.
3. Switch on the Financial Budgets toggle.

4. The Financial Budgets tile appears on your iCompleat homepage.

   You may need to log out and back in again to see it.

   

Enable budget checking in layouts

Budget checking must be enabled on layouts so that iCompleat can notify users of financial budget impact upon purchase and invoice approval.

To do this, go to Configuration > Layouts, then select the relevant layout, and switch on the Enable budget checking toggle.

Ensure you click Save Layout.

Repeat this process for all layouts that will apply to transactions affecting financial budgets.

When budget checking is enabled, operators cannot perform manual matching.

Adjust workflow behaviour

Workflows play an important part in budget checking, influencing who sees transactions that are out of budget, and which users and approval groups can validate transactions that have been budget-checked.

Administrators need to make a few simple changes to ensure workflows behave appropriately for financial budgets.

Allow budget approval

Allow budget approval for individual workflows ensures that people in the workflow must review and validate the budgetary impact of a transaction when they're approving it.

To allow budget approval for a workflow, go to Configuration > Workflows, open a workflow, and switch on the Allow budget approval toggle.

Approval group settings

Next, from the Budget Approval drop-down, you choose the criteria for an approval group or person in a workflow seeing budgetary information.

• None
  The approval group will never see budgetary information when reviewing a transaction for approval.
• Total or Period overspend occurs
  The approval group will see budgetary information when reviewing a transaction for approval if it will cause a budget to exceed its total or a period total.
• Always
  The approval group will always see budgetary information when reviewing a transaction for approval.

To configure this, open an approval group in a workflow, and select an option from the Budget approval drop-down.

Finally, you can choose to set conditions against approvers and/or approval groups that determine if a group is used when a transaction is either out or in budget at either header or line level.

To do this, click the Configure Criteria drop-down in an approval group, and click ADD to begin creating your condition.

Select the condition "Is out of budget" at header or line level, and then switch the toggle on if you'd like the group to be used for out of budget transactions, and leave the toggle off if the approval group should only apply to transactions within budget.

Create a financial budget

Creating a financial budget in iCompleat is simple - just follow these three steps.

Step 1: Budget Basic Details

Begin by creating a new financial budget and inputting some basic details.

Here's how:

1. On the iCompleat homepage, click Financial Budgets.
2. Click New budget.
3. Enter a Name for your financial budget.

4. Select budget Start and End months by clicking the calendar icons and browsing the calendars.

   Financial budgets can track a time span up to 12 months. The delivery date on a transaction determines which budget period it falls in.

   

5. Decide whether to track by Net or Gross value by selecting a checkbox.
6. Click the Tracking Codes drop-down and select up to three codes to track against your financial budget.
   To deselect a tracking code, click the cross beside it.
7. Click Save.
8. The financial budget editing page opens.

Step 2: Create nominal groups

Once your financial budget is created and you've input basic details including tracking codes, it's time to select the values your financial budget will track within those codes.

You do this by creating nominal groups. These are made up of combinations of values against your chosen tracking codes.

Here are nominal groups for a budget with two tracking codes: Site and Department. There are 5 nominal groups, each with a different combination of Site and Department values.

There’s no limit to how many Nominal Groups you can create within a single financial budget.

You can choose to import your nominal groups along with their budget values split across periods if you have that data in a flat file. Go to Import financial budget data to see how. 

Follow these steps to create Nominal Groups.

1. After you click Save, the financial budget editing page opens.
   Click Add Nominals.
2. Click the tracking code drop-downs, and select a value for each of them.
   You may only select one value per tracking code in a nominal group.
3. Click Add.
4. Your nominal group is added to the budget.
5. Click Save.

6. Repeat steps 1-3 to add the required number of nominal groups, clicking Save between each group to ensure your changes are saved.

   Clicking Discard removes any changes you've made to the financial budget since the last time you clicked Save.

   
    

Step 3: Enter & Split the Financial Budget Total

Once you've added all of the required nominal groups to your budget, you can add a budget total and split it.

You do this by assigning a budget total to each Nominal Group, and choosing to either split it evenly by month, or by manually setting custom monthly totals.

Here's a financial budget where each nominal group has been assigned a unique budget total. The top two nominal groups in the list have been split by custom totals in each month period, and the budget total for the bottom has been split evenly across each month period.

Follow these steps to split your budget total.

Split the budget total evenly across month periods

1. Beside the nominal group, click into the Total column.
2. Enter a budget total.
3. Click the arrow icon to the right of the total.

4. The budget total is automatically split evenly across the month periods in your financial budget.

   Amending one of the month totals will cause the overall total for the nominal group to adjust accordingly.

   
   

5. Click Save.

   Clicking Discard removes any changes you've made to the financial budget since the last time you clicked Save.

   

Enter custom totals for each month period

1. Beside the nominal group, click into the column for the first month.
2. Enter the budget total for that month.
3. Repeat for the other months.
   The overall budget total updates automatically.
   

4. Click Save.

   Clicking Discard removes any changes you've made to the financial budget since the last time you clicked Save.

   

Import financial budget data

You can choose to import your budget tracking data, which is a useful option if you already have your financial budget data in a spreadsheet.

Your budget import should follow a simple format, with up to three nominal types in the first three columns, followed by the budget total in the fourth column, and the period total broken down by month for the remaining columns.

Each row should represent an individual nominal value/code for each nominal type.

Format examples

Here's a layout guide for your budget import.

(click to zoom🔎)

And here's that same layout if it was populated with budget information for the nominal types Site, Department, and Project, tracking 6 nominal values for each nominal type.

The values against each tracking code are represented by the short code attributed to them in iCompleat, Eg. FN for the Department code Finance, and SHEF for the Site code Sheffield.

Each nominal value has a unique budget total split across 12 months.

(click to zoom🔎)

Follow these steps to import your financial budget flat file into a budget in iCompleat.

1. Create a new financial budget, entering the basic budget details such as Name, Start, End, and Tracking Codes.
   Then, click Save.
2. Go to Actions in the bottom-right, and click Import.
3. A dialog box appears explaining that any existing data in the financial budget will be overwritten. Click OK to confirm if you're happy to proceed.
4. Drag the financial budget flat file from your PC into the Import area, or click Select File to locate it.
5. The Financial Budgets dashboard appears, displaying the Importing status icon indicating that the import is in progress.
6. Your import data appears in the financial budget editing page.

Track your Financial Budgets

Budget tracking information is displayed at the point of ordering and approving, giving purchasers and approvers real-time insights into the impact of purchase orders upon any relevant financial budgets.

Purchasers will see warnings if an order they're about to place will exceed a financial budget.

They can click on any warnings to view the detailed impact of a purchase order on any relevant financial budgets, including details of the nominal codes.

Approve an order with a budget warning

Likewise, approvers can see the impact of an order upon a financial budget at the point of approval.

Orders can still be approved when they're out of budget, but we recommend approving with a comment so that the audit trail contains details of why the financial budget was exceeded.

Here's how:

Manage your Financial Budgets

Edit a financial budget

You can make edits to financial budgets at any time that will come into effect immediately, giving purchasers and approvers real-time insight into financial budget impact and status.

This includes amending the financial budget total and re-distributing the total across the budget period to reflect changing needs.

Just click an open financial budget to access the editing screen to make your changes. After making amendments to the financial budget, click Save to ensure your changes take effect immediately.

Export a financial budget

You can export your financial budget data to Excel to review how it is configured.

An exported budget in Excel.

To export a financial budget, follow these steps.

1. On the iCompleat homepage, click Financial Budgets.
2. Click the burger menu beside the financial budget you want to Export, and click Export.
3. A loading bar appears as your financial budget exports. 
   It should only take a few moments.
4. A confirmation message appears when your financial budget is successfully exported.
   Click Close.
5. The financial budget export can be found where downloads are stored on your PC.
    

Close a financial budget

You can close a financial budget so that it no longer tracks spend. Closed financial budgets remain saved and inactive in iCompleat.

To close a financial budget, clicked the burger menu beside a financial budget, and click Close.

View closed financial budgets

To view closed financial budgets, click the Show closed budgets toggle in the top-right of the Financial Budgets dashboard.

Re-open a closed financial budget

You can re-open a closed financial budget so that it is active and tracks data again in iCompleat.

Ensuring the Show closed budgets toggle is on (see above), click the burger menu beside the closed financial budget, and click Open.

The financial budget is open immediately.