Basic budgeting overview
You can use basic budgeting to define the financial dimensions for budgets, create budget models, and set up and use budget register entries. Also, you can set up optional budgeting workflows to automate the review of budget register entries, including budget transfers.
For example, if an approval is required for transferring a budget amount from one department to another, then workflow functionality helps you create an approval workflow. This topic explains the basic budgeting and control processes.
Almost every company that uses financials functionality in Dynamics 365 Finance must be able to create reports of budget versus actuals. This unit explains the minimum configuration that's required to create budgets in Finance or load them from another program.
Before you use basic budgeting, complete the steps that the following topics describe. If using budget control, you need to set up basic budgeting before you set up budget control.
Required:
- Define budget exchange rates
- Define budgeting parameters and number sequences
- Define financial dimensions for budgeting
- Create budget models
- Define budget codes
Optional:
- Define budget transfer rules
- Set up budgeting workflows
- Set up budget allocation terms
The system maintains the approved budget for a legal entity in a budget register entry document. The budget account entries are lines in a budget register entry document that contain financial dimension information, dates, and amounts of the approved budget. The budget register entry document is integrated with basic financial reports and inquiry pages where the system compares ledger actual amounts to budget amounts.
Multiple methods exist for creating budget register entries in Finance:
Enter the document information manually on the Budget register entries page.
Use the Microsoft Excel template that you can open by selecting the Open in Excel button on the Budget register entries page.
Use the Budget Account Entries data entity in Data management, to import budget register entries. You should consider using this method and turning on the Set based processing parameter when you need to import many budget account entries into the system.
Use the Generate budget register entry periodic process if the company uses the Budget planning functionality to prepare budget data.
The system considers the budget register entry as complete when you update the budget balances:
On the Budget register entries page, select Update budget balances for a selected budget register entry or multiple entries.
After you update the budget balances, the status of the budget register entry changes to Completed.
You can't reopen the completed budget register entry for edits. Therefore, if you need to adjust the budget data, create a new budget register entry instead of correcting data in the completed budget register entry.