Understanding Budget Inquiries
Oracle's PeopleSoft Commitment Control provides the following online inquiry tools:
The Ledger Inquiry Set component, which enables you to define sets of ledgers from more than one ledger group for consolidated views of transaction activity.
The Budgets Overview component, which provides everything from summarized amounts by ledger inquiry set and ledger group through drill down to individual budget journal lines and source transactions.
The Budget Details component, which provides routes to much of the same information that you can view using the Budgets Overview, but for a single control budget.
The Activity Log component, which displays transaction line details and budget information for budget-checking transactions.
The Commitment Control process creates separate closing entries in the activity log for purchase orders and requisitions, so that the activity log retains and displays a complete budgetary lifecycle.
Note: When purchase orders have been budget checked after they have been closed (marked as closed in PO by any means), closing entries will be created.
See Commitment Control Activity Log Page.
In addition, Commitment Control provides components for making specific inquiries about budget-checking status, budget-checking exceptions, and budget closing. These are discussed in the topics regarding the management of budget exceptions and the closing of budgets.
See Understanding Exception Handling and Notification.
See Understanding Commitment Control Budget Closing and Withdrawal Without Closing.
Security for Budget Inquiry
To use these inquiry pages, you must have security access to the Budget Inquire security event for the budgets you are inquiring upon, if that event is enabled.
Note: While you might not have security to inquire on all budget ChartField combinations that are involved in a transaction, you can view the budget impacts associated with each line from that transaction. If you attempt to drill from any of the activity lines to the budget inquiry, the security functions are executed and you are notified by an online message if you do not have the appropriate level of security to view that budget.
You are able to view the budgets for which you have inquiry security setup.
Ledger Inquiry Sets
Ledger inquiry sets enable inquiries across ledger groups. This is especially useful for reporting on transaction activity in related revenue and expenditure ledger groups, such as those you set up for project budgets with funding source tracking. You can combine ledgers from multiple ledger groups to present a consolidated view of budget and Commitment Control activity.
For example, to view the total budget, pre-encumbrances, encumbrances, expenses, revenue estimate, recognized revenue, collected revenue, and available budget balance for a particular department and budget period, you define a ledger inquiry set composed of the appropriate ledgers from the expenditure and revenue ledger groups that contain the control budgets for that department. You can then create an inquiry on that ledger set for that department and budget period using the Budgets Overview component.
Note: The Ledger Inquiry Set does not support ledgers that have a parent and child relationship to be included within the same ledger inquiry set.
Budgets Overview
The Budgets Overview inquiry component provides a view of budget activity for one or multiple budgets, from the level of a ledger group or ledger inquiry set to the more detailed level of individual budgets. This component also enables further drill down to budget journal lines and source transaction lines. In particular, the Budgets Overview inquiry pages offer you the ability to:
Select budgets for view by indicating the business unit, ledger group or ledger inquiry set, ChartField values or ChartField Value Sets, period of time, and budget status of the budgets you want to see.
You can save and reuse search criteria that you need frequently.
View summarized total amounts for each ledger in a ledger group, ledger inquiry set, or further refined set of budgets, according to your inquiry criteria.
View summarized available balances, net transfers, and associated revenue for each expense ledger group, ledger inquiry set, or further refined set of budgets that you inquire about.
View the budgeted amount from a prior fiscal year's budget that was rolled forward into the current fiscal year's budget.
View summarized available budget and uncollected revenue amounts for revenue estimate ledger groups, revenue ledgers in a ledger inquiry set, or further refined set of budgets that you inquire about.
View ledger total amounts and available budget—including and excluding the budget tolerance—for each budget or summarized subset of budgets that fits your inquiry criteria.
View statistical budget activity.
Drill down to detailed information about budget exceptions, associated budgets, parent-child relationships, and attributes of particular budgets.
Drill down to view budget checking activity.
Drill down directly to an originating source transaction.
Save inquiries to use again.
Budget Overview Drilldowns
You can drill down directly or indirectly in Budgets Overview to view budget and transaction details on the following pages:
Budget Detail Ledgers.
Summary Budget Ledgers.
Activity Log.
Budget Detail Attributes.
Parent & Children Budgets.
Associated Revenue Budgets.
Associated Expense Budget.
Budget Forecast Amounts.
Budget Transaction Type Amounts.
The budget detail page and other pages listed here are discussed in the section dealing with the viewing of budget details and transaction activity.
Budget journal exceptions inquiry is discussed in the section dealing with entering and posting of budget journals.
Budget Details
To view detailed information about one budget in particular, use the Commitment Control Budget Details page, searching by key ChartField values. This page is also available through the Budgets Overview component. Drill down from the Commitment Control Budget Details page to view budget checking activity lines, actual source transactions, budget exceptions, associated budgets, parent-child relationships, statistical budget details, and attributes of a particular budget.
Commitment Control Embedded Analytics
You can select the Budgets Overview or the Budget Details inquiry to view analytical charts for a budget with all activity ledgers combined or a chart of a budget that displays each budget ledger activity. These charts display as:
A stacked bar chart for a budget amount with expenses.
A two-dimensional pie chart for expenses without a budget or where the budget amount is zero.
A stacked bar chart for a budget with revenue.
A two-dimensional pie chart for revenue without a budget or where the budget amount is zero.
A displays data as a percentage of budget.
Activity Log
When you budget-check a transaction, the system creates activity lines and stores them in the activity log. Activity lines are identified by a commitment control transaction ID, commitment control transaction date, and commitment control transaction line number for each transaction line. You can use the Activity Log page to view the transaction lines and affected budgets for a transaction or multiple transactions for a single source transaction type. The Activity Log is extremely useful for researching and reconciling postings.
For example, if you search on the source transaction type AP_VOUCHER and select a specific voucher or range of vouchers to review, you can drill down to the Payables voucher line and then drill down directly to the Source Entry or the Source Inquiry for a selected Voucher in the Payables application.
In addition to the static transaction specific criteria fields, such as transaction ID and date, the system also dynamically makes available the from and to document and from and to date fields for a particular source transaction type if that source transaction has the document ID and date related fields set up as the 1st and 2nd Source Header ID fields in the activity log search criteria, which is located on the page events tab of the source transaction.
The display of the application business unit, 1st Source Header ID and 2nd Source Header ID on the Commitment Control Activity Log page, is based on the values that you enter for the source transaction. If a source transaction has only 1st Source Header ID set up, then one source header related criteria field is displayed.
The Application Business Unit filter is displayed if the business unit field is part of the Source Header Record keys. For example, if business unit is part of the JRNL_HEADER record for the GL_JOURNAL source transaction type, after selecting the Source Transaction of GL_JOURNAL the Application Business Unit filter is displayed. Each non-date or date time type of source header ID field is delivered with a view that is used as a prompt table for the Commitment Control Activity Log. A list of the delivered Source Header ID criteria fields for each source transaction is included in the topic regarding setting up source transaction types.
See Understanding Source Transaction Type Setup.
Note: If you add new or modify any existing source transaction definitions, you must also modify the activity log search sub-records KK_SHN_KEY_SBR2 and KK_SHN_KEY_SBR3 to include the value in the Source Header ID Field Name.