Understanding Line Item Activities

In Planning and Budgeting, preparers or casual preparers are budget users at the lowest-level planning center defined for the planning model. Budget preparers are responsible for preparing, modifying, and submitting a detailed, line item budget for their respective planning centers. If applicable, they also prepare, modify, and submit position and asset budgets.

Preparers start with a base budget that the budget coordinator develops. A coordinator usually works in the central budget office. The base budget may be populated with proposed budget data (based on prior year actuals, prior year budget figures, or some other basis). Alternatively, the base budget may be blank for zero-based budgeting. In that case, you must build the budget plan from the ground up.

In Planning and Budgeting, you work with line item activities in data slices based on the planning center definition. This increases the efficiency of the system and lets other budget users access other data slices of the planning model at the same time. When you work with a data slice, you're doing so for a specific planning center for a specific activity and scenario combination. (Remember that you can define multiple line item activities, and also define whether individual line item activities do or do not include data from associated assets and position budgeting activities.)

The sum of the line items for every planning center in the business unit comprises the organization's entire budget. Line item budgets include personnel, capital, non-personnel expenditures and revenue estimates for a defined period of time, and related position and asset data. If you use position budgeting, the system uses the data entered in position budgeting to calculate the personnel line items for salary, earnings, benefits, and employer-paid taxes. If you use asset budgeting, the system uses the data that you enter in asset budgeting to calculate asset and depreciation expenses.

Common Elements Used in this Topic

Adjustment Amount

Displays the net total of adjustments (percentage or fixed amount changes) applied to a line item.

Note: An override column exists at the coordinator setup level, and the coordinator can disable the adjustment column. Prohibiting overrides in the adjustment column prevents manual entry of values to modify budget amounts. It also prevents mass adjustments from being applied to the item.

Allocation Amount

Displays the net total of allocations (distributions to and from planning centers) applied to a line item.

The system displays an allocation applied to a planning center as a positive amount. The system displays an allocation applied from another planning center as a negative amount.

Base Budget

Displays the starting budget amount.

A coordinator establishes this budget amount, which cannot be modified. The base budget is budget version 0 for each planning center level.

Line Item Properties

The information in the Line Item Properties group box identifies the business unit, model, activity, scenario, planning center, and version on which you are working.

The defaults are based on the selected planning center version you selected from My Planning Workspace for a given model, activity, and scenario.

Dimensions and Members

The information in the Dimensions and Members group box identifies the dimensions used in the line item activity in which you are working.

You can select how to display these dimensions, such as using codes, descriptions, or both. Additionally, you can use the group box to filter on members you wish to work with in the line item grid.

Current Year Budget

Displays the budget plan approved for the current fiscal year.

Current Year Forecast and Current Year Estimate

Displays the calculated projection for the current fiscal year.

A forecast usually contains year-to-date actuals and current-year remaining budget amounts.

Driver

Displays the factor used in a method's algorithm.

For example, in the ECODRV (economic driver on history) method, the driver can be the inflation rate.

Historical Values

Displays prior year actuals, year-to-date actuals, current year budget, and current year forecast.

This data is associated with the analysis base definition for the planning model. A coordinator defines the values. You can compare your line item budget amount to the current and historical data.

Method Amount

Displays the budget amount resulting from the application of a method on a line item budget but before the system applies any adjustments or allocations.

For methods involving a calculation, the system performs the calculation by applying the method and method details, if applicable, to a line item budget. For methods that do not require a calculation, the method amount is defined by the method definition that you select. For example, if you select BASBUD (base budget) as the method, the method amount is equal to the base budget amount.

The method amount can represent the method amount for a single line item or the total method amounts for a group of line item budgets.

Method Base

Displays the value to which a method is applied.

A coordinator can initially assign a base for a method to a line item budget. For example, if you want the system to calculate the line item budget for travel expenses by applying an inflation factor to the prior year actual expenditure for travel, the method base is the prior year actual expenditure figure.

Method Default, Default Method, and Default

Displays the method initially assigned to the line item budget at the coordinator level.

Prior Year Actuals

Displays actual expenditures or revenues received for the last full year.

Spread Amount

Displays the adjustment amount to apply to the line item.

Spread Type

Select to determine how the system applies the spread amount. Values are:

Apply to All: The system populates each budget period with the amount that you enter.

Spread Evenly: The system distributes the spread amount equally across the budget periods for the line item.

Weighted Method: The system adjusts the amount on a proportional basis against the method total that appears when performing the spread.

Weighted Total: The system adjusts the amount on a proportional basis against the current total amount that appears when performing the spread.

Note: For the two methods using percentage calculations—ANN% (annual growth percentage on history) and ECODRV—there are two spread type choices: Spread Weighted and Spread Evenly.

Total or Total Amount

Displays the current budget amount for a line item.

It is the sum of the method amount, adjustment amount, and allocation amount.

The information includes the method amount, adjustment amount, allocation amount, total, prior year actuals, year-to-date actuals, current budget, and forecast for the line item. The total amount can represent the total budget for a single line item or the total budget for group of selected line item budgets.

Year-to-Date Actuals

Displays actual expenditures or revenues received from the beginning of the fiscal year to the present.

Dimensions Used in Line Items and their Relationship to Other Activities

Planning and Budgeting supports integration with Financial Management and third-party financial applications. The dimensions that you work with in line item activities must be:

Selected for use in Planning and Budgeting and activated.
Available in the financial application with which you integrate Planning and Budgeting.
Included as dimensions in the planning model.

The dimensions that are defined as dimensions in the planning model appear in line item activity.

Dimensions Configured for Planning and Budgeting

Use the Dimension Configuration page to select the dimensions that you want to make available in Planning and Budgeting. Select dimensions independent of the data sources with which you integrate Planning and Budgeting. However, if you select a dimension that an integration source does not support, you should evaluate the use of the dimension in the planning model in conjunction to your requirement in sending data back to the source system.

Dimensions Available by Financial Integration Source

Define the financial integration source using the Budget Installation Options page.

Note: As you can define multiple line item activities, you can define activities that do transfer data back to your financial management application, and other activities that do not transfer data back to your financial management application. For the line item activities that do not transfer data, you can specify any dimension, and you select dimensions at the planning model level.

In cases when you define activities that use non-general ledger ChartField dimensions, first associate these activities to the planning model, then restrict the activities that transfer data back to the general ledger to contain ChartField dimensions recognized by your financial application.

See Defining the History (Analysis Base).

See Activity Page.

Changing Dimension Combinations in Line Item Activity

When changing dimension combinations for a row in line item activity as a preparer, the system retains the associated method details as defined by the original dimension combinations. The following conditions apply:

When changing the dimension combination for a row in line item activity, a message indicates that the related method details will be retained when you save changes.

Click OK to proceed or click Cancel. Exceptions to this include:
- If the default method defined in the planning model does not allow override of the method, it changes to the new method and the system does not retain any of the original values.
  
  If the original method is the same as the new method for the dimension combination, the system checks for other override controls such as driver, base, and driver parameter. If an override is not allowed on any of these, the system does not retain the method details. Click OK to proceed or click Cancel.
- When a row is assigned as either the source or the target of the RELATE method, the system does not allow dimension changes.
Any adjustments originally made on the line item row are also retained when you make and save the dimension changes.

In this case, the system ignores the adjustment flag option on the Method Default page in the planning model for the line item activity.
Changes to the dimension combination are not allowed after you apply mass adjustments or allocations.

You must reverse mass adjustments or allocations before changing the dimension combination in the line item budget row.
For methods that are calculated based on an historical value, even though the system retains the method details, the method amounts are different if the history amounts for the modified line are different from the history amounts for the original line. If history data does not exist for the modified line, the history and method amounts are zero.

Inquiring on Combination Edit and Commitment Control Rules

When enforcing valid ChartField (dimension) combinations during planning and budgeting in your line item activity, an online check will be performed when adding any new ChartField combinations. You will not be able to save an invalid combination when the enforce budget is enabled for the line item activity and scenario. The budget coordinator uses the Activity Scenario page in the planning model to turn on enforcement of valid ChartField combinations for a line item activity. The staging process performs this validation check, and will mark an invalid rows in error with the red x symbol instead of a green check-mark when the row is in error and needs to be corrected. If you fail to correct this error online, the system will prevent you from submitting your budget, and does not allow submission if there are invalid combination rows.

Note: The use of the enforce budget flag for combination edits and commitment control rules is only valid for a line item activity, since a ledger is associated with type of data. Any data inserted into the line item from invalid combinations entered in position and asset budgeting activities will need to be corrected in the activity the combination is coming from.

When using single sign on options to the PeopleSoft Financial Management system, you can access the Combination Edit and Commitment Control Setup Inquiry page that has available links directly to PeopleSoft General Ledger. The links on this page are useful when troubleshooting to determine valid ChartField combinations. Once you know the Process Groups used for validation, you can click Review Budgets Combo Data to display a list of all valid combinations for each Process Group. For further analysis, the combination setup pages are also available.

Note: Refer to the Ledger for a Unit page regarding validation. The system requires the process group you define on this page as the rules are driven (or keyed) by process group.

See Setting Up Single Sign On.