Can I set up my budgets and categories for my next financial year in advance?

If you are within 6 months of the end of your current financial year, then you can go ahead and create your new financial year in ExpensePlus. Doing this will enable you to make any changes to the categories (or category connectors) that you wish to in advance. For example, you may wish to create new categories, delete categories no longer needed, or reflect a change in budget amount for a category in the new financial year. And the great thing about this is that you can do all of these things in ExpensePlus without affecting your current year's categories, category structure, or budget amounts.

To set up your new financial year, you just need to select the 'Set Up Next Year' button in either the Category Settings screen (or category connector settings screen). Usually, the way you will want your categories set up in your next financial year will be similar to the way they are set up in your current financial year. So to save you from having to reset everything up, when you click the 'Set Up Next Year' button, ExpensePlus automatically duplicates your categories, category structure, and budget amounts for you - then you can simply make any changes that you wish to.

What happens if I don't do this?

If you don't set up your categories for your new financial year before year-end, then that isn't a problem because ExpensePlus will do this for you automatically overnight on the last day of your financial year.

Do all Categories for all funds get copied into the new financial year, or just categories for the fund you are viewing at the time of clicking the button?

All categories for all funds get replicated (along with all category connectors too if you are using these).

Does the current year budget amounts get copied into the new year?

Yes! You can edit any that have changed (without affecting the budget amounts set for the existing financial year).

Does this mean I can create my next year's budget within ExpensePlus?

Many organisations create their budget for the next financial year within ExpensePlus. If you're wanting to do this too, then we'd recommend that you go ahead when you are ready to get started with this and create your new financial year in ExpensePlus so that you can directly add/edit/delete categories and budget amounts within ExpensePlus - saving yourself the additional step of having to have a spreadsheet

Can I still edit categories in previous financial years?

Yes! Categories are edited per financial year - you simply need to select the 'financial year' dropdown at the top of the screen.

Are there any disadvantages to creating my next financial year in ExpensePlus now?

No, not unless you expect to make major changes to your current year's categories or budgets. If you are expecting to make changes in your current financial year that you wish to also appear in your future financial year, then it's best to do these first, as it will save you from having to make changes twice (at the point your next financial year is created it has to then be updated separately from your current financial year).

Is there an option to copy over the current year projections to create the new year's budget amounts?

No, this currently isn't an option. Most organisations take time to review their Income & Expenditure Summary (by Fund) report for the current year, to help them set the budgets for the next financial year, and they set the new year's budget amounts based on a combination of the following:

The previous year's budget (most future budgets tend to be built from existing years' budgets)
The projected over-under spends (these indicate where you might want to consider increasing/decreasing the budget....or putting measures in place to ensure you don't under/overspend next year)
The vision and objectives of the organisation (it's always worth going back to your vision and of how you can better set your budget to enable you to achieve your vision, which may mean reducing budgets for some budgets regardless of (1) and (2) above)

Can you re-run the setup of next year more than once?

No, (not that you'd want to do this because once it's been run, you can make changes to the categories that have been copied). The only disadvantage of running the setup of the new financial year too early is that if you have run it and you decide you want to create a new category in the existing financial year, then most likely you will need to additionally add this to the next financial year as well.