Understanding Line Item Allocations

You use allocations to distribute or transfer amounts from and to other planning centers, budget periods, and dimension members. From the My Planning Workspace page, for a line item activity perform allocation tasks using the Edit Allocations link on a planning center's master version.

Allocate budget amounts to cover, or offset, the costs in one planning center by charging them to another planning center. An amount that you charge to another planning center displays as a negative amount in your planning center. This same amount displays as a positive amount in the other planning center that is intended to cover the cost.

For example, suppose that you are responsible for a print shop's budget. Your planning center name is X defined as a department ID. Your customers are internal to your organization and your costs must be fully covered. Your operating budget is 450,000 USD for the year that you are ready to allocate. You are authorized to allocate 50 percent to planning center A, 35 percent to planning center B, and 15 percent to planning center C. When you complete your allocations, your total budget amount nets to zero, and the budget amounts for planning centers A, B, and C increase according to the allocations transferred to them as follows:

Consider defining a distinct time frame during your budgeting process specifically for making allocations. The time period for this activity can occur before the bulk of your budget work or after you submit all budgets. In this way, you can be assured that when you perform allocations, they are synchronized with your budget amounts. If you apply allocations while other users continue to modify budget amounts, you are likely to encounter allocation amounts inconsistent with your budget amounts because the budget amounts are still changing. This circumstance is more likely to occur if you apply allocations using percentages rather than fixed amounts.

You can apply line item allocations at any planning center level for the master version, provided that your User ID is configured with the Allowed to do allocations? option on the User ID page. The line items that you have access to depends on your authority to access the activity and planning center for your user ID and role name.

See Assigning Planning and Budgeting Roles to PeopleTools User Roles.

When you want to apply allocations, check out the master version when your status is Open to access the planning center. Use line item data in the master version when you perform allocations. The system reflects the allocations that you apply across different planning center levels in the master version and in the working budget versions at planning center levels above the budget preparer level.