Parent and Child Budgets

In Commitment Control, you can build a hierarchy between budget definitions such that a parent budget has one or more child budgets. The budget amounts for each child budget together represent the amount in the parent budget's bucket, but divided into smaller buckets, or budgets, for each of the child budgets. You might have an appropriation budget, for example, that is a parent to multiple organization budgets; you therefore set up an appropriation budget definition as a parent to the organization budget definition:

Budget Definition Fund Code Account DeptID Budget Period

APPROP

200

6840000

000

2010

ORG

200

6842000

115

2010M01

ORG

200

6843000

210

2010M01

In this example, the two organization budgets shown represent departmental allotments of an appropriation, representing different accounts and budgeted by monthly budget periods.

Source transactions checked against a child budget are also checked against the parent budget if both budget definitions are attached to the General Ledger (actuals) ledger group. Similarly, the sum of child budget amounts usually equals the parent budget amount, although they may add up to less and may even exceed the parent budget if you select the Child Budget Exceeds option on the Control Budget Options page when you set up the child budget definition.

Along with parent budget control over child budget amounts, a common rationale for this structure is due to the parent budget being typically created at a very high level, while the child budgets are usually created at a more detailed level.

Important:

If you do not select the Child Budget Exceeds option, the system performs a validation each time you post a budget journal to ensure that the total across all child budget amounts in the child budget ledger does not exceed the parent budget amount. However, if more than one child definition is associated with a parent budget definition, the system does not add child budget amounts across child budget definitions to arrive at a total child budget amount to validate against the parent budget. Rather, the system views each child budget definition as the "same money" in "different slices," and it only validates the child budget amounts within the child budget definition for the budget journal. Therefore, if you have more than one child budget definition associated with a parent budget definition, and those child budget definitions do not represent the "same money," your child budgets can exceed your parent budget even if you do not select the Child Budget Exceeds option.

Setting Up Parents and Children

To create the parent-child relationship:

  1. Include the ChartField values for the parents and the children on the same budget key translation trees.

    The ChartField values of the parent budget must be at a level that is the same as or higher than the child's to ensure that each child budget is translated to its parent budget.

  2. Define the parent budget definition.

  3. Define the child budget definition.

    When you indicate the parent budget definition on the Control Budget Options page, the system automatically copies the parent's control ChartField, control ChartField values, Ruleset ChartField, Ruleset ChartField values, and key ChartFields into the child budget definition. You can add more key ChartFields to the child, but it must contain all of the parent key ChartFields and trees. The translation levels for the key ChartFields in the child budget definition can be lower than that of the parent.

Automatic Generation of Parent Budget Level Activity from Child Budget and Budget Adjustment Journals

After you have set up your parent child budgets, Commitment Control provides the option for automatic generation of parent budget-level activity to streamline the entry, adjustment, and transfer functions for multilevel budgeting with complex budget hierarchies. When you use the parent budget automatic generation feature, the budgeting impact associated with child-level budget journal entries can be automatically reflected at all levels above the specified originating child budget entry level. This functionality can save a significant amount of time because budget maintenance can be done at the lowest child level and the system automatically handles the budget impacts associated with each of the higher parent budget levels. This is sometimes referred to as bottom-up budgeting.

See Generate Parent Budgets, Budget Adjustments, and Budget Transfers Automatically.

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