Maintaining Standard Budgets in General Ledger

This chapter provides an overview of Oracle's PeopleSoft General Ledger standard budgets and discusses how to:

• Maintain detail budgets.

• Maintain project budgets.

• Copy budgets.

• Import budgets from flat files.

• Post budget journals.

Understanding General Ledger Standard Budgets

PeopleSoft General Ledger enables you to develop, maintain, and report on standard budgets, also referred to as static budgets. As with actual or statistical data, you maintain budgets in a ledger. You can create any number of separate ledgers to track various types of budgets, including high-level forecasts and budgets based on summary ChartField levels.

This section lists prerequisites and discusses:

• Methods for creating and maintaining standard budgets.

• Budget spreading, repeating, and percentage-increase processes.

• The Budget Copy process.

• The Budget Allocation process.

Note. Standard budgets do not include control budgets, which are set up and maintained using the Commitment Control feature.

Prerequisites

Before you enter amounts in a budget ledger, you must:

1. Define a ledger template.

2. Link the template to a detail budget ledger.

3. Add the budget ledger to a budget ledger group.

4. Activate the budget ledger groups for business units.

Note. The scenario ChartField in the budget ledger and budget journal line records does not exist in the standard ledger definition. PeopleSoft Budgeting uses the scenario ChartField extensively because that ChartField facilitates an integration link between PeopleSoft Budgeting and General Ledger. Even if you do not currently use PeopleSoft Budgeting or populate values for this ChartField, retain the additional ChartField in the general ledger budget records. You cannot include a budget ledger in a budget ledger group with other types of ledgers. That is, you must not include budget ledgers with an actuals (recording) ledger or any other type of ledger in a ledger group. You do not have to use the same accounting calendar for a budget that you use for an actuals (recording) ledger. You create calendars on the Detail Calendar page, activate the budget ledger, and select the calendars that you want to use for the standard budgets.

See Also

Defining a Ledger Template

Defining a Ledger Group

Defining a Detail Ledger

Defining Ledgers for a Business Unit

Defining Accounting Calendars

Adding Scenario Values

Methods for Creating and Maintaining Standard Budgets

You can set up standard budgets based on fixed amounts or percentages. In addition, you can set up standard budgets by:

• Copying amounts from other ledgers.

• Cloning existing budgets or loading data from spreadsheets.

• Using automatic replication and spreading.

• Creating an unlimited number of budget versions.

• Configuring budget worksheets with PS/nVision.

You can also set up standard budgets that:

• Budget at any level in the organization.

• Budget for any period of time.

• Reflect potential organizational changes in budget reports without affecting current financial reports.

  You can use PeopleSoft Tree Manager to do this.

Note. General Ledger integrates with PeopleSoft Budgeting, which shares all of the functionality described in this section. If you use PeopleSoft Budgeting to manage the budget process and prepare budget ledger data, you have immediate access to that budget data for reporting and comparison with General Ledger actuals data. Many of the steps described in this section apply only if you do not use PeopleSoft Budgeting for budget preparation.

See PeopleSoft Enterprise Planning and Budgeting PeopleBook

Typically, you maintain budgets in an unbalanced ledger. With expense budgets and sales forecasts, for example, you are normally concerned with only one side of the accounting equation. Because you use most budgets for planning and analysis (and you continually modify and round them), you may not need to create an exact offset every time that you change a budgeted amount. The Detail Budget Maintenance pages that enable you to modify budget rows directly are supported against unbalanced ledgers only.

In General Ledger, you can:

• Enter and modify budget amounts by sets of ChartFields or by period.

• Enter a lump sum to be spread across multiple periods for a ChartField combination.

• Copy any combination of ledger rows from existing ledgers.

• Import budgets from spreadsheets.

• Allocate amounts to a budget ledger.

• Enter budget journals.

  Except when entering allocations and budget journals, you update the ledger balances table directly with no audit trail. By entering journals and posting them to the budget ledger or selecting the Request Allocations option to create journals in allocations, you maintain the same audit trail as with actuals (recording) transactions.

• Create an all-encompassing and detailed budget by cloning the actuals ledger, and then you can generate a budget summary ledger to maintain higher-level information.

• Create a budget using an across-the-board percentage, such as a payroll increase based on a 4.5 percent cost-of-living index or a sales target forecast that is 10 percent higher the following year.

  Simply copy the amounts from the actuals ledger and have General Ledger automatically adjust those amounts by the specified percentage.

• Spread a given amount (for example, 15 million USD budgeted for equipment) evenly across specific ChartFields or according to a basis (such as the statistics code for employee head count).

• Adjust budget amounts for each individual ChartField combination by period.

Budget Spreading, Repeating, and Percentage-Increase Processes

The budget spreading and repeating processes provide an alternative to the often time-consuming job of specifying budget amounts on an amount-by-amount, period-by-period basis. You can enter a lump sum budget amount or a percentage of an existing amount for a ChartField combination.

General Ledger can automatically spread an amount or apply a percentage across the periods in a fiscal year. The amounts can be:

• Added by period.

• Repeated by period.

• Spread evenly across the periods.

  You can also use percentage changes by period.

Spreading or repeating a fixed amount or percentage over a range of periods reduces data entry. Here is an example:

Suppose that you send a memo to the manager of the account management department indicating that the monthly office party expense for January through June will be 1,200.00 USD. The manager repeats the 1,200.00 USD amount for each month during that period.

When you review the sales department's budget, however, you realize that you have made a mistake, and you send another memo clarifying that 1,200.00 USD is the entire amount for the half-year period, and it must be divided evenly among the six months. The manager decides to spread a negative 6,000.00 USD evenly across the January through June time period. This leaves 200.00 USD in each monthly period and corrects the error.

Now suppose that after you consider the number of new employees, you decide to add 200.00 USD to each monthly period for a total expense of 2,400.00 USD. However, before the budget is finalized, you receive a memo from the budget committee directing you to reduce all nonessential sales and all general and administrative expenses by 50 percent. After you reduce the selected monthly expenses by the required 50 percent, you have 1200.00 USD for the final office party budget for the six months period.

This table shows the transactions:

Remember the following points when you spread amounts:

• You cannot spread amounts to closed periods.

• You cannot spread amounts to balanced ledgers or to summary ledgers.

• You can spread positive or negative amounts.

Budget Copy Process

The Budget Copy feature is ideal for creating multiple versions of a budget. You set up what-if scenarios or assess the impact of each level of review. You can use this feature to create a new budget based on an existing ledger or to update an existing budget and have General Ledger automatically increase or decrease the amounts copied by a percentage that you specify.

The Budget Copy process updates or inserts new rows of data into the selected target ledger. If data for the specified ChartField values in the pool (source) ledger already exists in the target ledger, the system updates (or overwrites) that data for the year and periods specified. If no data exists in the target ledger for the specified ChartFields, General Ledger adds those rows to the target ledger. Any rows that do not meet the pool ledger criteria remain unaffected.

Here is an example:

Suppose that the sales manager for corporate headquarters expects that the revenue for the eastern and central regions will increase by 128 percent in the year 2000. To create a sales projection for the year 2000, the manager copies the actuals amounts from 1999 to the budget ledger. From the actuals ledger, the manager selects a range of revenue accounts (400000–401000) and the appropriate sales departments (21200 and 21300). All products and services are included. The system copies only those account balances that match the ChartField values that the manager entered. Any other rows of data that already exist in the budgets ledgers are not affected. Next, the manager selects the appropriate value in the Factor % (factor percentage) field. In this case, it is 128 percent of the actuals balances.

To populate a year's worth of budgets with a one-to-one copy from the actuals ledger to the budgets ledger, you set up a period-to-period copy. Then you run it 12 times in the Budget Copy process request using a different as-of date for each request. You cannot use a multiperiod time span (such as All Year) in the pool definition because the Budget Copy process sums the entire year in one row rather than as period 1, period 2, and so on. You could spread that amount to one period at a time or over an entire year, but you would not perform a one-to-one copy.

Budget Allocation Process

Allocations processing in General Ledger enables you to spread either fixed amounts or a pool of complex pro rata amounts from multiple ChartFields. You can use statistical and monetary accounts from any ledger (or combination of ledgers) as the basis. Allocations provide complete flexibility in mapping ledger amounts across the chart of accounts. You can use allocations to generate large volumes of budget entries quickly and easily. Allocations processing supports top-down budgeting and the dynamic generation of budgets based on any segment of the organization at any given time.

Allocations enable you to spread amounts from any ledger to the budget ledger so that you can devise budgets and forecasts based on the strategic information already stored in your database. Here is an example:

Suppose that your sales manager is preparing next year's monthly sales targets for the eastern sales division, as well as a budget for travel expenses. The sales manager bases the forecast on a number of factors:

• 2004 revenue should be 128 percent higher than 2003 amounts.

• Because of unusual market fluctuations in 2003, the manager wants the 2004 forecast to reflect the 2002 monthly sales trends.

• The travel expense budget will be 10 percent higher than last year, allocated using the new sales projections as a basis.

First, the sales manager uses the Budget Copy Definition pages to copy 2002 eastern sales region revenue figures from the actuals ledger into the budget ledger for 2004.

The manager uses the Factor (%) field to increase by 128 percent the 1998 actuals amounts. Then the sales manager does the same for the travel expense accounts, increasing them by 10 percent.

Next, the sales manager uses the Budget Allocation process to reallocate revenue amounts according to 2002 sales trends, using the 2002 amounts in the sales revenue account for all departments as the basis. In this way, sales figures for the eastern division are spread according to the general sales trends for 2002.

As the final step, the sales manager uses the new 2003 sales revenue forecast amounts as the basis for allocating the travel expenses.

See Also

Maintaining Detail Budgets

Copying Budgets

Processing Allocations

Maintaining Detail Budgets

You use the Detail Budget Maintenance page, the Data by Year page, and the Data by Period page to make adjustments and perform inquiries on budget ledgers. To access budget ledger data using these pages, the ledger definition must specify the ledger record as LEDGER_BUDG, and the ledger must be unbalanced.

To maintain detail budgets, use the Detail Budget Maintenance component (DEPT_ENTRY).

The Detail Budget Maintenance page is intended for use in making adjustments of existing data and performing inquiries on existing data. It is not intended for adding volumes of data, or, to provide the extensive validation functionality that the Journal Entry page provides. The Journal Entry page is the primary place to enter financial data with full validation functionality.

This section discusses how to:

• Select budget ChartField criteria.

• Adjust budget data by year.

• Adjust budget data by period.

• Use the Budget Calculator feature.

Note. To maintain transactions in different currencies, use allocations or budget journals rather than the Budgets pages described here.

Pages Used to Maintain Detail Budgets

Selecting Budget ChartField Criteria

Access the Detail Budget Maintenance page (General Ledger, Maintain Standard Budgets, Detail Budget Maintenance, Detail Budget Maintenance).

To use the Detail Budget Maintenance page:

1. Enter the fiscal year that you want to review or modify for the business unit and budget ledger.

2. Enter or select ChartField values.

   You can use wildcard characters to narrow your search of ChartFields.

3. Click the Query link at the bottom of the page.

   The Data by Year page displays the data for each selected ChartField for the specified year.

Adjusting Budget Data by Year

Access the Data by Year page (Click the Query link on the Detail Budget Maintenance page).

To use the Data by Year page:

1. Select the Del/Cal (delete/calculate) check box next to the ChartField rows that you want to either recalculate (by clicking the Calculate link) or delete (by clicking the Delete Selected link).

2. To view the Data by Period page and adjust information for an account on a period-by-period basis, click the account value link in the Account field for a specific row.

3. To return to the Detail Budget Maintenance page, click the ChartFields link.

Note. You can enter data for ledgers only if the Ledgers For A Unit - Definition page specifies direct budget ledger updates.

See Using the Budget Calculator Feature.

See Also

Defining Ledgers for a Business Unit

Adjusting Budget Data by Period

Access the Data by Period page (Click the Account link on the Data by Year page).

To use the Data by Period page:

1. Modify values, add or delete selected rows of data, or perform calculations on specified periods.

2. Click the Calculator link to access the Budget Calculation page, where you can modify budget calculations for accounts by period.

Using the Budget Calculator Feature

Click the Calculator link on either the Data by Year page or the Data by Period page to access the Budget Calculation page.

Calculation Type	Select one of the following options to determine how the system spreads the amount across the specified periods: Repeat Amount by Period: Select to replace the amount in each successive period with the change value. Spread Evenly by Period: Select to divide the amount by the number of periods, distributing it evenly to each period. Adjust by Percent: Select to designate a percentage by which the system increases the amount each period. Add by Period: Select to designate a specific amount to add to each period.
Selected From Period and Selected to Period	Select the period range for which to apply the change. Note. These fields appear only when you click the Calculate link on Data by Period page.
Change Value	Enter the change value amount based on the selected budget period (either a year or a period). For example, suppose that you enter 12,000.00 USD to spread evenly over 12 periods, replacing the original budget of 60,000.00 USD, and you select OK on the Budget Calculation page. On the Date by Period page, no value appears in the Current field, and 12,000.00 USD appears in the Revised amount field. The Change field indicates the reduction in the period amounts from 5,000.00 USD to 1,000.00 USD, and the % Change field displays a negative 80.00 as the overall percentage reduction.

Note. If the percentage of change is more than 99999.99 percent, it appears as 99999.99%.

Maintaining Project Budgets

This section discusses how to review and modify project budgets.

To maintain project budgets, use the Detail Project Maintenance component (PROJ_ENTRY).

Pages Used to Maintain Project Budgets

Reviewing and Modifying Project Budgets

You maintain project budgets in the same way that you maintain standard budgets. Project budgets normally include project detail information, which you can modify.

See Also

Budgeting Project Costs and Revenue

Maintaining Detail Budgets

Copying Budgets

To copy budgets, use the Budget Copy Definition component (ALLOC_COPY_LEDGER) and the Budget Copy Group component (ALLOC_GROUP_BD).

This section discusses how to:

• Set up the budget copy definition pool.

• Set up the budget copy definition target.

• Create a budget copy group.

• Initiate budget copy processing.

Pages Used to Copy Budgets

Setting Up the Budget Copy Definition Pool

Access the Budget Copy Definition - Pool page (General Ledger, Maintain Standard Budgets, Budget Copy Definition, Pool).

Pool Record	Enter the source budget ledger to copy.
TimeSpan	Specify the period (relative to the current fiscal year and accounting period) for which to retrieve the source records. Enter a single or multiperiod time span to determine the accounting periods used for the copy.
Pool factor	Enter the factor that the system uses to increase or decrease the amounts copied to the target ledger. You can enter positive or negative values. For example, to increase 1,000.00 USD to 1,100.00 USD (10 percent), enter 10, or you could decrease the amount by 10 percent by entering –10.
Pool Fields	Select the field name that the system uses to select pool rows from the pool record for the copy. The pool record name is the same as the ledger record name that is defined in the ledger template. If the pool record uses a subrecord to define its ChartFields, the prompt table for the field name does not list these ChartFields. However, you can still enter the ChartFields. When you save the budget copy definition, the system checks the record to validate the field name that you enter.
How Specified	Specify individual pool field values, use trees to select ChartField values from specified levels and nodes, or specify a range of field values. Note. Use trees whenever possible to reduce maintenance when ChartField values change.
Selected Detail Values	Select to use detail values. Use the Specify Value/Range of Values group box to list pool field values, such as specific department or account values.
Selected Tree Nodes	Select to activate the tree information fields. In the Tree Type field, select Detail to enter a range of detail values for a node. Select Dynamic to include the range of detail values defined by a table in the database. Enter each tree node. The tree level is optional. If the tree has levels, you can limit prompting in this field to selected levels.
Range of Values	Select to activate the From and To fields to enter the start and end pool field values. If you leave the From field blank, the system selects all pool field values that are less than or equal to the value in the To field. You cannot leave the To field blank. If the field is blank, the system uses the lowest possible value.

Setting Up the Budget Copy Definition Target

Access the Budget Copy Definition - Target page (General Ledger, Maintain Standard Budgets, Budget Copy Definition, Target).

Note. Once the copy or update is complete, you can review the results on the ledger inquiry pages, or you can review and modify the new budget using the Detail Budget Maintenance component.

See Also

TimeSpans

Creating a Budget Copy Group

Access the Budget Copy Group page (General Ledger, Maintain Standard Budgets, Budget Copy Group).

Effective Date	Enter an Effective Date for this allocation group.
Status	Select Active or Inactive.
Step	Enter the name of a process step to determine the processing order.
Continue	Select this check box for a particular step to have the system continue the copy even if the step fails.
	Click the Copy Allocation Group button to make a copy of the group.
	Click the Rename Allocation Group button to rename the copy group.
	Click the Delete Allocation Group button to delete the copy group.

Initiating Budget Copy Processing

Access Request Budget Copy - Allocation Request page to specify the request parameters and run the Allocation process (FS_ALLC) to copy the budget. If you select the Start Step option, the system starts processing from the last failed step. The Start Step option appears only if the prior step fails.

Importing Budgets from Flat Files

Budget data in General Ledger is stored in ledgers; therefore, you import budgets directly to the Detail Ledger table (PS_LEDGER_BUDG), which is delivered with General Ledger.

See Also

Importing and Exporting Ledgers

Posting Budget Journals

As with other journals, you can create and post budget journals to the ledger that is specified in the journal header. Unlike the other budgeting methods, however, you do not directly update the ledger balances table. Rather, the posting process updates the ledger table and retains the journal entry as an audit item. In this way, you generate an audit trail to record the original budget and subsequent changes.

See Also

Posting Journals