Budget details for an account

The Budget Accounts Information page lets you manually edit or view account-level budget data, or add new budget data for an account.

There are two ways to add account-level data to a budget. You can manually enter the data or you can upload a spreadsheet. Learn more about how to Overview of creating budgets.

To view the Budget Accounts list, go to Budgets > All > Budgets repository. Locate the budget and select Budget details. Select Add, Edit, or View to access the Budget Account Information page.

Add budget details for an account

Use the Budget Account Information page to add or edit the account for which you're budgeting, along with:

• Dimensions for the account
• Periods for the account budget
• Budget amounts for periods

To add budget detail for an account:

1. On the Budget accounts list (Budgets > All > Budgets repository > Budget details), select Add.

   The Budget Account Information page appears.

   In Add mode, the lower portion of the page is blank. When you select Show periods the page refreshes to display the periods you can budget and corresponding fields in which you can assign budget amounts.
2. In the Account field, enter the account for which you want to add a budget.
3. Optionally, in dimension fields (department, location, class, customer, employee, item, project, supplier) select the dimensions to add to the budget. After your save the budget detail, you cannot change the dimension settings.
   What are dimensions?

   A dimension is a category of data that you can organize and sort in meaningful ways. Sage Intacct provides the following predefined dimensions:

   • Location
   • Department
   • Class
   • Customer
   • Item
   • Project
   • Supplier
   • Employee
   • Warehouse (if you subscribe to Inventory Control)
   • Contract (if you subscribe to Contracts)

   In addition, Intacct enables you to define new dimensions to suit your needs. Use these user-defined dimensions to organize and sort categories of data unique to your business. For example, if you’re a software company with multiple product lines, you can create a user-defined dimension called Line of business. Then add the values Direct customers, Channel partner, and OEM.

   Dimensions enable you to collect, sort, analyze, and report on data within one category, or between categories, so you can identify key factors such as:

   • Your most profitable or most costly items or customers
   • The return on investment of a project or department
   • Whether and to what degree a new product or product line is successful
   • Which way a particular aspect of your business is trending
   • Intacct dimensions give you fine control over data definition and data hierarchy

   With dimensions, you can customize financial reports around specific business activities, get greater visibility into how the business is doing, and make faster, more meaningful business decisions.

   Think of dimensions as a more powerful alternative to subaccounts.

   Additional fees can apply for the Project dimension and user-defined dimensions. Contact your account representative for more information.

   Additional rules for Department and Location

   • Calculations are based on the combination of account and department and location. In other words, if you specify the account 6020 Freight, the department Operations and the location California, the calculations are based on numbers only for that account and department combination that's also located in California.
   • All children of parent departments and locations are included in the calculations. You might want to budget at the child level, and not budget at the parent level, for example. This lets you track costs and revenues to budget, at a very detailed level. For this reason, we recommend you plan your budget before you begin entering. Best practice is to prepare your budget first on a separate piece of paper or Excel spreadsheet, for faster entry into Sage Intacct.
4. Enter the Periods from date and Periods to date to specify the periods for which you're preparing the budget. Typically, this covers a fiscal or calendar year.
5. Select Show periods to display the reporting periods in the range you just specified.

   If no periods are displayed, go to Company > Setup > More > Reporting periods. For each reporting period to use, select Edit to display the Reporting Period Information page, and select the Use for budgeting checkbox.

   You cannot use a period if it is already being used in another existing budget combination of reporting period, account, department, and location.
6. Select the Select checkbox for the reporting periods to add to your budget, and then assign budget amounts to those periods. You can either enter the amounts manually or have them computed for you:
   1. To enter them manually, enter them in the End of period budget amount fields.
   2. To compute them automatically, in the Past period field enter the monthly period to use.
   3. Select a method in the Based on field:
      • Actuals. Use the actuals for the selected period. You do not enter any information in the Compute amount field.
      • Budget. Base your budget on a fixed amount, which you enter in the Compute amount field.
      • Employee count. The amount you enter in the Compute amount field is multiplied by the number of employees to calculate the Budget amount field. The employee list is used in budgets so that budgets can be based on head count. More specifically, the calculation is performed from the start date to the end date of employment, which you can check via Company > Employees. A budget calculation based on head count retrieves data for all employees who were in active status during the selected period. So it's important that your employee list be current if you plan to use this function in your budgeting process.
   4. Enter a number in the Grow by field. This number can be a positive or negative (or zero) amount or percent.
   5. Select either the Percent or Amount option, depending on how you want the budget growth to be based.
   6. Enter a starting amount in the Compute amount field.
   7. Select Compute.
7. Select Save.

After you save a budget you cannot change the account or any dimensions included.

View the budget for an account

For more information about budgets in Sage Intacct, check out our on-demand training course titled Working with Budgets.