Operating Expense Process Flow
Planning and budgeting assumes a bottom-up forecasting approach where budget owners use historical Actual expense detail to create their departmental operating expense Forecasts. Forecasts are based on trends or entered manually by Account or by detailed Item lines.
The OpEx Forecasting tasks include creating, validating, and adjusting the operating expense Forecast during the Forecasting phase.
Creating the OpEx Forecast
The budget owner uses the OpEx by Dept and the OpEx Detail forms to create the OpEx Forecast. The budget owner can also use the OpEx Predictive/Spread form to create Forecast values from predictions.
Validating the OpEx Forecast
The budget owner views the OpEx Predictive/Spread form to analyze the expense trend in relation to historical Actuals. This form provides a reasonableness test to ensure accuracy based on historical trends.
The finance executive views the following OpEx components:
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The OpEx Trend Dashboard to analyze the expense trend by Account and Department.
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The OpEx Dashboards to analyze expenses by Account and Department at a more detailed level and to analyze year-over-year trends.
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The OpEx to Revenue Dashboard to analyze expense amounts relative to revenue.
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The OpEx Predictive/Spread form to analyze the expense trend in relation to historical Actuals. This form provides a reasonableness test to ensure accuracy based on historical trends.
Adjusting the OpEx Forecast
Finance executives view the OpEx Top Level Adj form to analyze spending by Account and Department in a list format. The navigation begins at a top level and allows the user to drill down to specific Department and Account intersections.