Understanding Planning and Budgeting Activities

Use activities to develop your plans and budgets. Your role(s) and user ID definition determine your access to the various activities and scenarios. The coordinator selects the activities and scenarios to be used in the planning model for a business unit on the Activity Scenario page.

Activity	Description
Line item	Used to view and change plan or budget amounts in a line item format using methods or manually entering amounts. You can also make fixed amount adjustments to individual line items. Alternatively, use this activity to edit line items via a spreadsheet as an alternative way to enter line item data. Use the `Edit Adjustments` options against any working version to apply line item amount modifications to one or many line item rows at a time that can be applied or reversed. Use the `Edit Allocations` option against the master version to distribute amounts across line items. Allocations enable you to transfer amounts from one or many line item rows to another, such as transferring one planning center's amounts to another planning center. After the system processes an allocation, the source line item rows reflects a decrease and the target line item shows an increase as a result of the executed allocation.
Position budgeting	Used to add, modify, or view position data details, including salary, earnings, benefits, and employer paid tax costs associated with positions. After you complete position budgeting, you may need to recalculate the planning model to summarize the position data into your personnel line item activity.
Asset budgeting	Used to create, modify, or view assets and depreciation costs associated with capital acquisition plans. After you complete asset budgeting, you may need to recalculate the planning model to summarize the asset and depreciation data into your line item activity.

Activity

Description

Line item

Used to view and change plan or budget amounts in a line item format using methods or manually entering amounts. You can also make fixed amount adjustments to individual line items. Alternatively, use this activity to edit line items via a spreadsheet as an alternative way to enter line item data.

Use the Edit Adjustments options against any working version to apply line item amount modifications to one or many line item rows at a time that can be applied or reversed.

Use the Edit Allocations option against the master version to distribute amounts across line items. Allocations enable you to transfer amounts from one or many line item rows to another, such as transferring one planning center's amounts to another planning center. After the system processes an allocation, the source line item rows reflects a decrease and the target line item shows an increase as a result of the executed allocation.

Position budgeting

Used to add, modify, or view position data details, including salary, earnings, benefits, and employer paid tax costs associated with positions. After you complete position budgeting, you may need to recalculate the planning model to summarize the position data into your personnel line item activity.

Asset budgeting

Used to create, modify, or view assets and depreciation costs associated with capital acquisition plans. After you complete asset budgeting, you may need to recalculate the planning model to summarize the asset and depreciation data into your line item activity.

PeopleSoft Planning and Budgeting uses roles, models, activities, and scenarios to manage access to the planning centers and their versions. My Planning Workspace helps ensure that the system retrieves the appropriate type and volume of data from the database at any one point in time in which you have access. This keeps the data organized and maximizes system performance. Versions enable you to use multiple variations of your plan or budget by planning center for data manipulation and comparison purposes before you decide which variation is the one you want to submit as your final plan or budget. When you submit a planning center version, you are submitting a plan or budget for a specified activity and scenario within a planning model. The role associated with your planning center you are submitting is typically related to the level in which you prepare your plan or budget. For example, a preparer or casual preparer is the detail or lowest level in which the activity scenario is prepared. A non-preparer role (analyst, reviewer, and coordinator) is a roll up or higher planning center level that represents a collection of one or many detail planning centers. Users with these roles review, adjust, approve, or reject the plans or budgets.

If the coordinator has defined the secondary security option in Planning and Budgeting as a part of your line item activity plans, access to your planning centers for these activity types may be restricted. The use of secondary security does not change the page layout of My Planning Workspace, but it can limit actions and access for users with partial access. Specifically, users with partial access cannot:

Submit plans or budgets.
Access planning targets from Line Item Details page.
Create private views that display a tree.
Use the Variance Analysis and Version Analysis reports.
Perform allocations.

Note: The coordinator should evaluate the organization's requirements and take into consideration user access with respect to row level security and the definition of secondary security for line item activities. When using this type of row-level security, you should have at least one user per planning center who has full access and can perform the actions required for budget preparation.

Common Elements Used in This Topic

Activity

Select an available activity value and scenario value, then click the Refresh button.

Available activities depend on security and the values specified in the Activity Group page, but selected on the Activity Scenario page in the planning model.

Business Unit

An identification code that represents a high-level organization of business information. Valid values depend on the business units associated with planning models. A planning model can be associated with only one business unit within your organization. However, a business unit can have multiple planning models.

Click to access the Compose Mail page, and create and send emails to other planning and budgeting contacts.

Planning Center

Dimension (ChartField) defined to represent the cost center, balance sheet, or revenue planning center of the organization that also facilitates the approval structure of the budget or plan. Valid dimensions used to define a planning center include Department, Operating Unit, Product, Project, Fund, Program, Class, ChartField 1, ChartField 2, and ChartField 3. A planning center drives how activities are performed. If a planning center is defined as department, the system sorts and performs planning and budgeting activities by Department.

Planning Guidelines

Click to access the Documentation and Guidelines page, and access documents related to the plans and budgets.

Planning Model ID

Refers to the name of a planning and budgeting model used to perform budget development of activities and scenarios for a business unit.

Refresh

Click to refresh the page with new or updated information. Refresh the page after selecting new activity and scenario values, or new version and status values.

Role Name

Role assignments defined for your user ID. The role values include Preparer, Casual Preparer, Analyst, Reviewer, and Coordinator. Your selection determines which planning centers you can access.

Scenario

A planning and budgeting definition to group a unique set of assumptions or type of plan or budget information to be prepared. Click Refresh to update the page.

Available scenarios depend on security and the values specified in the Scenario Group page, but selected on the Activity Scenario page in the planning model.

Status

Current status of the planning center for an activity scenario:

Approved: A planning center version that has been submitted to a higher planning center level becomes approved.

Complete: A budget or plan at the highest planning center level defined for the activity scenario in a planning model is submitted.

In Review: A budget version that is currently being reviewed.

Not Ready: The budget version is not available because not all of the budget versions at the lower budget levels are submitted. Once all lower-level budgets have submitted their budgets, then the status changes to Open. Individual versions that have been submitted at the lower-level budget have a Submitted status.

Open: Budget version is open and available to be worked on.

Rejected: Submitted version is rejected at the higher budget level. All versions at lower budget level are unlocked and in Rejected status and allow update.

Submitted: Budget version is submitted to the next budget level and ready for reject or approve action. All versions at the submitted budget level are locked and cannot be modified. The system creates a master budget version based on the submitted version.

Note: The coordinator submitting at the highest planning center level will prevent any further edits or rejections to the activity scenario in a planning model. There is no reject available for the highest level of a plan or budget if submitted.

User Preferences

Click to access the User Preferences page, and set defaults for the My Planning Workspace view pages for a specific user ID. Setting default preferences here for your planning model, business unit, role name, activity, and scenario enables you to bypass the Workspace Search page. If you do not establish this default information, you must select the model, activity, and scenario for the user role on the Workspace Search page prior to accessing the My Planning Workspace page.

Version

Select one version to submit as your final budget or plan. Versions are different variations of a planning center's plan or budget the system uses for data manipulation and comparison.

Workspace Search

Enter search parameters to retrieve different workspaces. Your user access definition determines the available options for role, business unit, model, activity and scenario.

Status Icon

Indicates the status of a planning center's activity scenario.

Not Ready: Displays as a yellow inverted triangle; indicates the planning center is not yet ready for submittal.

Rejected: Displays as a red square; indicates the planning center has been rejected.