This chapter covers the following topics:
Budgets in Oracle Marketing are the funding source for a variety of objects. These objects, such as campaigns and events, may require other approvals before a funding request may be made. Budgets may exist in a hierarchical structure, a root budget supplying funds to child budgets, allowing you to view and control costs. Budget checkbooks have columns for: Total (original amount), Holdback, Planned, Committed, Balance (Total – Holdback – Committed), Utilized and Balance, giving you a clear view of utilized and available funds. Oracle Marketing’s budgeting functions are grouped in the following categories:
Budget Planning
Budget Execution
Budget Tracking
Budget Administration - Refer Oracle Marketing Implementation Guide for information on administering budgets.
Budget planning includes defining Fixed and Accrual budgets, the market eligibility of customers, and the product eligibility for a product or product family.
A fixed budget is a pool of money, with value > zero, decided up front to fund sales, marketing, and partnering activities. Fixed budgets can be defined for different customer and product attributes.
Multiple marketing objects request money from fixed budgets including campaigns, campaign activities, events, event activities, and so on.
Here is an example of how a campaign updates the budget:
A fixed budget is set up for all sales and marketing activities for customers in the United States for $500,000. A campaign is created for $10,000. When it becomes active, the budget has the following balances:
| Total | Committed | Utilized | Paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500,000 | 10,000 | 0 | 0 |
This is an advertising campaign, and a marketing manager contacts an advertising agency. The agency runs the ads for the company and charges the company $8,000. The marketing manager enters this $8,000 as an actual cost for the campaign. The budget balances become:
| Total | Committed | Utilized | Paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500,000 | 10,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 |
For more details about different budgets, refer Oracle Trade Management User Guide.
Market eligibility defines what customers or customer groups the budget is targeting. For a fixed budget, market eligibility serves two purposes:
Classification
Validation - to validate that a campaign or event schedule matches that of the budget category.
Eligibility for a fixed budget can be defined for the following:
Individual customers
Individual customers are eligible whether they are sold-to, bill-to, or ship-to customers. These are customer “accounts” in Oracle Trading Architecture Community (TCA).
Buying Groups
Buying Groups are organizations formed when companies group themselves together to leverage on higher purchase volume achieved as a group.
Lists
Lists are groupings of customers or customer contacts created based on user-specified criteria. You can specify the criteria using Oracle Discoverer workbooks or queries and save the result as a static list.
Segments
Segments are also groupings of customers or customer contacts. Like lists, they are also created based on user-specified criteria via Discoverer workbooks or writing queries. However, segments are dynamic in that every time you generate the segment, based on the query criteria, the result is generated afresh.
Territories
Territories are yet another way to group customers together, based on their location and other attributes. They are created in the Oracle Territory Manager module.
Product eligibility defines what product or product families or groups the budget is targeting. For a fixed budget, product eligibility mainly serves the purpose of classification.
Use the Budget tab to set up funding for campaigns, offers, events, and deliverables. To draw funds from an existing budget, use the Budget item on the side navigation in the individual campaign, event, offer, or deliverable.
Procedures in this section include:
A fixed budget has a budget amount specified at the time of creation and activation.
It can fund marketing activities such as campaigns, events, and deliverables
Its budget amount can change by transfers and requests
It is active until a user manually closes it, even after the end date is reached
Use the following information to create a fixed budget.
Navigation: Budget > Budgets > Create
Notes
Setup Type: Select Fixed. The Setup Type for a budget determines what attributes are displayed as side navigation links and whether the budget is a fixed budget or a fully accrued budget.
Business Unit: Business units are organizations set up in Oracle Human Resources with Type = Business Unit. It is used here mainly for classification purposes. It can also affect the approval rule built for the budget.
Budget Category: These are set up in Administration and can be used to classify the budget. An approval rule defined for a budget may use budget category as one of its criteria.
Budget Amount: The budget amount is the money set aside for this fixed budget.
Holdback amount: Holdback amount is the amount which you would like to reserve and not allocate down to lower levels. A budget owner may choose to release the holdback amount at any time.
Start and End periods: These are set up to map to GL calendars and if selected, will limit the start and end dates.
Use the following navigation to update market eligibility for fixed budgets.
Prerequisite: A draft fixed budget exists
Navigation: Budget > Budgets > Market Eligibility
Use the following information to update products for a fixed budget.
Prerequisite: A draft fixed budget exists
Navigation: Budget > Budgets > Products
Notes
Include a product category, a product, or a combination of both. Some meaningful combinations may be:
Include Categories Only. For example, include a particular category called "Household Supplies" which contains multiple household supplies products within it.
Include Categories and Products. For example, include a particular category called "Household Supplies" which contains multiple household supplies products within it, plus a product called "Industrial Cleaning Solution" which does not fall into the "Household Supplies" category but is a product that you want to associate to the budget.
Include Categories, Include/Exclude Products. For example, include a particular category called "Household Supplies" but exclude a product within the category called "Discontinued Washing Detergent."
Include Some Categories, Exclude Some Categories. For example, include a bigger category called "New Products" but exclude a smaller category called "Household Supplies."
Include Some Categories, Exclude Some Categories, Include Products. For example, include a bigger category called "New Products" but exclude a smaller category called "Household Supplies", and in addition include a particular product called "Discontinued Washing Detergent."
Include Some Categories, Exclude Some Categories, Exclude Products. For example, include a bigger category called “New Products” but exclude a smaller category called "Household Supplies", and in addition exclude a particular product called "New Industrial Washing Detergent."
Include Products Only. For example, simply include a product called "New Industrial Washing Detergent."
Use the following navigation to create a budget request from a budget.
Prerequisite: Access to the Budget Request page
Navigation: Budget > Budget Transfers > Create Request
Use the following navigation to create a budget transfer from a marketing object.
Prerequisites
Access to the Budget Transfer page
Both the granting and the receiving budgets are active
Navigation: Budgets > Create Transfer
Use the following navigation to create a budget transfer request from one budget to another.
Prerequisites
Access to the Budget Transfer page
Both the granting and the receiving budgets are active
Navigation: Budget > Budget Transfers > Create Request
For marketing purposes, the Budget Utilized column contains all the costs posted to the budget from marketing objects such as Campaigns and Events.
Prerequisite: Access to view the budget
Navigation: Budget > Budgets
Notes
Component Type: Campaign Activity or Offers which source from a Campaign.
Document Customer: The customer specified on the document (that is, an order or simply an adjustment). This is only populated if Channel Category is Offer.
Document Type: Order. This is only populated if Channel Category is Offer.
Document Number: Order number. This is only populated if Channel Category is Offer.
Document Date: Order date. This is only populated if Channel Category is Offer.
Adjustment Utilization Type: This can be Utilized, Accrual or Adjustment. It is Utilized for off invoice discounted amounts as well as costs from campaigns/events posted to the budget. It is Accrual for accrual offer amounts.
Adjustment Type: This is only populated if Utilization Type is Adjustment.
Adjustment Date: The date on which the budget is updated with the adjustment.
Utilization Amount in Different Currencies
Transaction Currency: This is the currency from an order transaction.
Budget Self Currency: This is the currency which the budget is created in.
Reconciliation is a way to return the unutilized money at the end of a marketing activity. Budget reconciliation performs the following tasks:
It adjusts previously committed, but unutilized funds, transferring them from the Committed column to the Available column (“Reconcile Un-Utilized”)
It adjusts previously utilized, but unpaid funds, thus adjusting the Utilized column accordingly and transferring it from the Committed column to the Available column (“Reconcile Un-Utilized and Un-Paid Earnings”). This option is not currently applicable for marketing purpose.
The Reconcile button will appear after the marketing activity’s end date and when its status is Completed or Closed, or if the activity has no end date specified, its status is Completed or Closed.
Use the following information to reconcile a budget.
Note: As a sample object, a Campaign has been used in the topic, but reconciliation can be performed for Events and Deliverables as well.
Prerequisite: Access to the Budget page of an object such as a campaign
Navigation: Campaign > Campaigns > Budget
Notes
The Reconciliation section at the bottom of the page appears if one of the following is true:
End date of the campaign is past.
Offer status = Completed or Closed
Reconciliation Option: The option "Un-Utilized" is applicable for marketing while the other, "Un-Utilized and Un-Paid Earnings" is not. Un-Utilized amount = (Committed – Utilized). During reconciliation, the budget’s committed amount will be reduced and its available amount will be increased accordingly. For example, an offer has committed = $10K, utilized = $8K. This kind of reconciliation will decrease the committed from $10K to $8K and increase the budget available by $2K.
The budget checkbook summarizes the main budget buckets.
Use the following procedure to view a budget checkbook.
Prerequisite: Access to the Budget
Navigation: Budget > Budgets > Checkbook
The customer checkbook summarizes the main budget buckets by customer. You can get to a customer checkbook by viewing the ’Customer Budget View.’ A profile option determines if you can view all the customers’ budget views or simply those customers who belong to the budget you own. For more information, refer Oracle Trade Management Implementation Guide.
Use the following procedure to view the customer checkbook.
Prerequisite: Access to the Budget
Navigation: Budget > Budgets > Customer Budget View
Notes
Total after Holdback - Total amount of the budget minus holdback amount
Planned - Total amount of not yet approved budget requests
Committed - Total amount of all approved budget requests
Recalculated Committed - The amount of commitment calculated based on actual utilization. If re-calculated committed is implemented, the amount here displays the real committed funds
Balance - Total after Holdback minus Committed
Use the following information to view a budget rollup.
Prerequisite: Access to the Budget
Navigation: Budget > Budgets
Notes
Change the view from the default Self View to Rollup View.
Use the following information to add an existing budget threshold rule to an existing budget.
Prerequisite: Access to the budget
Navigation: Budget > Budgets
Notes
Search for and select the threshold rule set up under Administration.
After all the necessary information has been entered, a user can initiate the activation of a budget.
Use the following information to activate a budget.
Prerequisites: Access to the Budget
Navigation: Budget > Budgets
Notes
Click Request Approval, review the approval details, and click Submit.
Topics in this section include:
A budget request is a request to withdraw money from a budget and it comes through marketing objects such as campaigns, activities, or deliverables. A budget request may also be submitted by sales representatives who want to give an offer to customers or by the owner of another budget. Requests generally need to be approved before money actually gets transferred. Approval rules can be configured to route different requests to different approvers.
A budget may provide funding for multiple marketing activities, and vice versa; an activity such as a campaign can receive funds from multiple budgets.
While a request is asking for money from another budget, a transfer is moving money to another budget. In any case, all movements of money in and out of any given budget are tracked to provide full audit control.
For example, a “New Product Introduction” fund may not need as much money as originally forecasted because the new product was not performing well. As a budget user, you can then transfer money out of it into other budgets so that the money can be spent elsewhere.
Reconciliation is a way to return unutilized money at the end of a marketing activity. Previously committed, but unutilized funds, are adjusted by transferring them from being committed to becoming available again. You can use this functionality when a marketing activity has completed or when the activity has been cancelled.
You can reconcile a budget only if a campaign’s end date has been reached and its status is ’Completed’ or if the campaign has no end date and its status is ’Completed’. You can drill down all reconciliations to view their details. You can also set the reconciliation to be performed automatically by a concurrent process by defining a grace period for it.
Topics in this section include:
The Table Budget Buckets describes the multiple buckets used to track different Budget amounts.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Total | Total budget amount |
| Transferred In | Amount transferred into the budget. This is added to the Total. |
| Transferred Out | Amount transferred out to another budget. This is subtracted from the Total. |
| Holdback | Amount held in reserve. |
| Available | Total – Holdback |
| Planned | Total amount of not yet approved budget requests. |
| Committed | Total amount of all approved budget requests. |
| Balance | Available – Committed |
| Utilized | Amount that has been utilized. |
| Paid | Amount that has been paid. |
The budget rollup view shows the total funds in a budget, including the sum of all its child budgets. For example, if there is a budget hierarchy where there are 3 levels, each level with one node, like USA, Western Region, and California, then the roll-up view of USA will be the numbers for USA+Western Region+California.
So if the California budget has committed $10,000, the Western Region budget on its own has committed $5,000, the USA budget on its own has committed $3,000, then the roll-up view for the USA budget’s committed funds is $10,000 + $5,000 + $3,000 = $18,000.
The Roll-up view of the Western Region budget’s committed funds is $10,000 + $5,000 = $15,000.
The Roll-up view of the California budget’s committed funds is $10,000.
A budget self view means that it will only show the transactions/activities that the budget itself directly funds. In the above example, the budget self view for the California budget’s committed is the same as its roll-up view (that is, it equals $10,000). The budget self view for the Western Region budget’s committed is $5,000. The budget self view for the USA budget’s committed is $3,000.
Users in a budget hierarchy can see real-time, roll-up views based on their user profile currency. For example, a manager in Canada may see the roll-up view in Canadian Dollars. The budget’s parent may be owned by a US manager who may prefer to see the roll-up view in USD.
Related Topics
See the Oracle Trade Management User Guide for more information about budgets.