Budgets allow finance teams to control spend across the business and communicate spend limits to purchasers. Compliance moves out of spreadsheets or emails and directly into Order.co! Budgets can be set by User, Location, or Cost Center and even be allocated across accounting codes.
How Budgets Work
Once a budget has been created, any Orders, Returns, or Virtual Card Transactions (if enabled) that are completed during the set budgetary period (daily, weekly, monthly, annually) will be used when calculating the budget. Users can see their budgets on their dashboard or the Budgets Page.
Users will be able to see any budgets that are assigned to their user account or the Locations and Cost Centers they have access to. Budget tiles will show how each budget is tracking for the current budgetary period. Budgets that are within 95% of their limit will appear as Approaching Budget to help your team avoid going over budget.
Viewing Budgets
Users can view budgets on their Home Page, on the Checkout page, and on the Budgets page. On the Home page, users will see all of the budgets they have access to. If they have a personal user budget, that will display at the top of the module as Your Budget.
Click View All to open the Budgets page. Clicking a budget will open the associated Budget Detail Page.
As your users create orders, they will see any budgets associated with their cart on the Checkout page. The Budget Impact module will give users visibility into how each purchase impacts their budget performance. Clicking View all will open the Budgets page.
The Budgets page displays all of the budgets that a user has access to. Get at-a-glance updates on how your business is pacing against your budgets.
Click a budget tile to open the Budget Detail Page which includes a list of the orders, returns, and virtual card transactions (if enabled) that are impacting the budget. For businesses that use budget allocations, this page will show the progress towards each accounting codes budget limit. Clicking into each allocation will open a list of the orders, returns, and virtual card transactions impacting the allocated budget.
On this page, orders that are currently processing will also be tracked to help your team forecast how much of their budget will remain before submitting new orders.
Once budgets have been created, you and the users assigned to those budgets will see a budget tracking window on their dashboards.
Excluded from Budgets
Rewards earned on orders completed during the budgetary period are not included in budget calculations.
Completed Returns and Refunds are subtracted from the budget at the time of completion, and do not impact a previous period's budget.
Tax and Shipping are excluded from budget calculations when budgets are allocated by accounting code.
Creating a Budget
To create a new budget click Budget Management. Select a location, user or cost center to assign a budget, or pick "All" to assign the same budget limit to everything. If desired, you can then break out individual locations, users, or cost centers to assign unique budgets to. Next, select how often the Budget resets (Daily, weekly, monthly, biannually, or annually) and when the budget reset will occur (e.g. Sunday or the 1st of the month). Input an amount for the budget and click Update to save.
Budgets can also be allocated across accounting codes, which helps direct users on how to use their budget! To update your budgets, click Enable Allocation under the Allocations Column. Select which code category you would like to use for allocation and click Update. At first, the total budget amount will be allocated evenly across all codes. You can either edit each line or disable lines to allocate to only a few codes. This is helpful when you want your business to limit purchasing in certain spend categories, but not others. Click Update after any changes and check the Total line to ensure you have fully allocated your budget!
Budgets can also include Virtual Card Transactions when tracking your spend. To include transactions, including refunds, check the Include Virtual Card transactions in budgets box at the top of the Budgets page.
Going over budget will result in an email alert to all users with that permission.
Only Users with the Approvals Permission will have access to the Budgeting tab. Budget calculations will include tax and shipping costs associated with each order, unless allocations have been implemented. Returns will be subtracted from budget totals, but only if the order and the return for that order are completed in the same budgetary period (weekly, monthly, etc.)
Over Budget Approvals
Want to control spend, without creating bottlenecks? Use the Over Budget condition in your approval rules! This condition allows you to create approval rules or steps that trigger if an order causes a budget to be exceeded, or if the budget has already been exceeded for the budgetary period. Check out the Approvals article to learn more!
If you have any questions, email Support@Order.co for further assistance!