Budgets & Financials

This page covers:

Budgets & Financials Structure

Budgets & Financials (Forecasts or Planned Costs) enable organizations to plan expenditure across categories, periods, activities, or other segments, as well as report actual expenditure. A Budget in Amp Impact essentially consists of two parts:

Here is a screenshot of what an individual Budget with related Financial records looks like:

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The Budgeting Process

The budgeting process varies by organization and Amp Impact allows organizations to tackle the planning stage in two ways:

1. Create one or multiple Budgets and the related Financial records directly in Amp Impact: This is helpful when an organization just needs to create or modify a single Budget and users are comfortable navigating the Budget and Financials structure directly in Amp Impact.

2. Use the Excel templates. More often than not, users are accustomed to managing budgets in Excel and find the interface and experience easier than trying to create line items one by one in Amp Impact. Amp Impact offers two Excel template versions:

   1. Basic Excel Upload/Download template: The Excel Upload/Download feature allows you to download Budget and Line Item records to an Excel sheet, make changes offline, and re-upload the templates.

   2. Enhanced Excel planning and reporting templates: These two templates enable more advanced and user-friendly Financial management in Excel. By activating and using the Enhanced Excel templates, users can download the Budget structure, plan their budget for multiple time periods with ease, and finally report on actuals in a more familiar and customizable Excel interface.

Create a Budget

Whether you are creating a single Budget directly in Amp Impact, or want to activate the Enhanced Excel Budget templates, the first step is to check which Budgets exist for your Project.

1. Navigate to the “Financials” (or similar) tab to see available Budgets, including their status (Planning, Approved, etc.).

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2. To create a new Budget, click on the “New” button. Typically, the Budget Status will be “Planning” when a Budget record is first created and it will be updated as the Budget is finalized.

3. Budgets can be connected to a specific Framework by selecting the relevant Framework in the “Framework” field. Connecting a Budget to a Framework can help organizations track how their spending relates to the intended impact or outcomes of their Projects.

4. A Budget can be “Locked” for editing after it is approved by checking the “Locked” checkbox.

5. If a Budget is no longer in use due to a revision or for any other reason, it can be made inactive by deselecting the “Active” checkbox.

Setup the Budget to Utilize the Enhanced Excel Budget Templates

Once the first Budget record is created, organizations can enable the Enhanced Excel Budget templates through the “Budget Cycles” component. It enables organizations to predefine Budget and Reporting Periods for their Projects and generate two Excel templates: The Excel Budget Planning Template and the Excel Financial Reporting Template.

Here are the setup and activation steps:

1. Navigate to the Budget record and locate the “Budgeting Cycle” component by clicking on “Setup”.

2. Define the Budget Period to set the duration for which the budget is established and intended to be in effect by selecting a planning frequency from the “Budget Period” picklist. This will help you utilize the prebuilt Budget Planning template.

3. Next, connect the Budget Period you just selected with the relevant Reporting Periods from your Project by selecting the relevant Reporting Period from the “Budget Planning Periods” picklist. The “Budget Planning Periods” list only displays Reporting Period options that align with the frequency selected in the “Budget Period”. For example, if “Quarterly” is selected in the “Budget Period” field, then only quarterly Reporting Periods will be available for selection.

4. Similarly, you’ll define the Budget Reporting Intervals to set the frequency at which budget actuals will be reported. This is done by selecting the relevant option from the “Budget Reporting Intervals” picklist and relating that to the available Reporting Period options. This will help you utilize the Budget Reporting template.

Enable Reporting Periods for Financial Tracking

Remember the Reporting Periods created earlier in the project setup process? The Reporting Period setup should align with the budget planning and financial reporting intervals and play a critical part to ensure that the Enhanced Excel Budget template structure is correct.

Note these steps to ensure that the hierarchy is automatically created and maintained:

1. On the Reporting Period records, ensure that the “Start Date” and “End Date” for each financial reporting interval align with the “Start Date” and “End Date” of the intended budget planning periods. E.g., if you define that you will plan your budget in quarterly increments (Parent Budget Period) and report on financials in monthly increments (Child Financial Reporting Period), the “Start Date” and “End Date” for the three months of the quarter need to align with the “Start Date” and “End Date” of the quarter. This means that if you set the Reporting Period dates for March from March 1st to April 1st, the hierarchy will not automatically be established and the Excel templates will not render the correct reporting structure.

2. If you remove a Reporting Period record from the “Budget Reporting Periods” or “Budget Planning Periods” fields after saving them, the hierarchy associated with that reporting period will be cleared as well.

3. If you delete a Reporting Period record associated with the “Budget Planning Periods” field, the hierarchy associated with the deleted record will be deleted as well.

4. Verify that the Reporting Periods you want to use are available for financial tracking by checking that the "Available for Financials" field on the Reporting Period record is checked (this box is checked by default).

Create Financial Line Item Records

1. Once a Budget is created, you can create the related Financial records (budget line items).

2. Click on “New” to add a new Financial record/Budget Line Item and fill out the relevant fields.

    

3. Click “Save”.

4. There are a number of fields on the Budget record that will be updated automatically as changes are made to the related Financial records/Budget Line Items.