Re-profiling a budget spend/income
This article explains how you can re-profile budgets in ExpensePlus.
Budgeting in ExpensePlus
Budget amounts are set per financial year. At the end of a financial year, budget amounts are automatically copied to the next financial year, but can then be updated as required. Making updates to the budget amounts in a new financial year won't impact prior financial years.
Linear Profiled Budgets
Typically, budgets are profiled linearly, with the budget amount evenly distributed between the months of the financial year.
Where there are 12 months, this means 1/12 of the total budget specified is allocated to each month.
Custom Profiled Budgets
Where income or expenditure is not expected to be linear, the budget can be custom-set, with a specified amount per month.
Typical examples of this include:
- Event income/expenditure for annual events
- Larger one-off or annual expenditure, such as examination fees, or insurance paid annually
Editing Budget amounts
You can then edit budget figures as needed:
- Enter annual totals for linear budgets, and ExpensePlus will automatically calculate the monthly allocation, or
- Enter monthly figures for custom budgets, and ExpensePlus will automatically calculate the annual total.
Switching between Linear and Custom budgets
You can switch between Linear and Custom budgets by clicking on the 'Linear' or 'Custom' label in the second column.
When switching between these two profiles, ExpensePlus will offer you the option of how you want to switch:
- whether to convert the existing figures, or
- whether to move the total to a single month, or
- start from scratch.
Re-profiling Budget Amounts
There are two common exceptions to this:
- Budget reprofiling within a category group - this is where the budget amounts set are adjusted within the categories of a category group (but keeping the overall category group total the same). Where the charities' budget has been signed off at category group level (rather than category level), or where agreed by the trustees, this may be permitted, and any changes won't affect the overall signed off budget totals
- Budget reprofiling between months - this is typically acceptable, whereby the budget total remains unchanged, but the budget profile between months is updated. This is typically a good idea to do, where a budget has been profiled incorrectly when being set up originally (e.g. event income has been profiled as 'linear' rather than custom set based on the months the income is likely to appear within the charity's accounts.
Budget projections provide an alternative way to manage and account for where additional income/expenditure has been received or spent, or the profile of when it has come in is different to what has been budgeted.
Typically, changes are usually made where there is a significant issue (not for smaller amounts).
To better understand the Finance Reports module, please view the module overview video here.