This article describes the default behaviour of a highly configurable system. Your granting program may appear or behave differently depending on user permissions and custom configurations. If you do not appear to have access to everything you need, use the Help > Request Help link to request additional permissions.
You can specify budgets in Community Investment Enterprise that can apply to a specific mailbox, proposal template, and currency. When a payment is added to a proposal, you can add one or more distributions to split amounts and specify which budget an amount draws down from. When reporting on budgets and their payments for real-time financial reporting, you can only see details for the mailboxes you have access to.
Permissions
The following permissions allow users to interact with budgets:
- Budget Manage: The user can create new Budgets or delete existing Budgets (only Budgets without payments can be deleted).
- Budget Edit: The user can edit existing Budgets.
- Budget Lock: The user can lock Budgets to prevent them from being edited.
A user with any of the above permissions can only manage budgets in the mailboxes they have access to. To update permissions, contact your Client Success Manager or administrator.
Budget Templates
Budget templates specify common configurations for your program budgets and are created by Benevity in partnership with your administrators. When creating a new budget, the first step is to select a budget template with preconfigured settings. Multiple budgets can be created from one template.
If you want to learn more about your templates or make changes, contact your Client Success Manager.
Creating a budget - adding or copying
To create a new budget from a template:
- Go to Budgets & Payments in the top navigation bar.
- Select Budgets to view a summary of budgets.
- Select Add budget above the budget table.
- Choose the fiscal year you want to create a budget for and select one or more budget templates. Each template selected creates one budget for the selected year.
- Select Create to add the new budget(s).
To copy an existing budget with modified budget details:
- Go to Budgets & Payments in the top navigation bar.
- Select Budgets to view a summary of budgets.
- Choose a budget in the budget table and select Copy budget.
- Choose a fiscal year and select Next to add the new budget.
Find and view your budgets on the Budgets page.
Editing budget details
When a budget is created from a budget template, the template details are copied to the new budget. Some of the budget details can be overridden and edited by a user with budget manage or budget edit permissions.
To edit a budget:
- Go to Budgets & Payments > Budgets.
- Update filters and apply them to locate the budget you want to edit.
- Select the budget name in the results table below.
- Select Edit budget details in the new tab that displays the budget summary.
The following fields are editable:
- Name: name of the budget
- Amount: the total budget limit.
- Period Start: the date the budget becomes available.
- Period End: the date the budget is no longer available.
- Fiscal Year: the fiscal year that aligns to the period start and end date.
- External ID: Used by some clients to manage integrations or other custom use cases.
- Description: additional context for the budget.
- Active: enable to make the budget available for selection when managing payments. Disable this option when there should be no more payments created with the budget.
- Allow Amount Exceeding: Defaulted based on Budget Template settings. If checked, users can create payments that exceed the budget amount. If unchecked users are not allowed to create payments that exceed the budget amount.
- Allow Period Exceeding: Defaulted based on Budget Template settings. If checked, users can create payments outside of the period start/end dates. If unchecked users are not allowed to create payments outside these dates.
Changing the budget template
If a budget was created using an incorrect budget template, you can change the template.
To update the template:
- Open a budget and select Change budget template. If you proceed, the budget will operate according to the settings of the new budget template.
- Select Yes to confirm.
- Choose the new template by selecting the row.
Select Save to confirm the change.