How do I deal with budgeting in Platinum?
Summary
You may wish to set budgets for your business. These are effectively performance limits or targets that you want, or think you will hit, for your Profit & Loss centres. You can then compare the budgeted figure against the actual to obtain an indication of how you are performing, e.g. you may see that you need to hassle the sales team to make more sales or you may give yourself a pat on the back for doing so well. You can set budgets for Balance Sheet centres as well if you wish.
The following article explains how this is achieved in Platinum.
More Information
Go to " Nominal Ledger Maintenance Options Budget Maintenance Budget Maintenance".
- In the "Centre" field, enter in the nominal code you wish to budget on, or press <Ctrl+F1> to search for it.
 | The 'Actual' column will only show values for items which have been printed and accepted on the Profit & Loss Audit Trail or Balance Sheet Audit Trail, depending on what centre you are looking at. |
- In the 'Budget' column, move down the screen, entering the budget for each month. If the centre is a Profit & Loss Sales centre, the budget will need to be entered as a negative value, (i.e. the centre will have a credit value generally); if the centre is a Purchase centre the value will need to be a positive value (i.e. the centre will have a debit value generally).
- If you wish to set the same value against all months, enter the value against one of the months, then press <F5> to fill in the same value for the remaining 11 months. If you wish to set one figure to be divided over the twelve months, enter the figure against any month and press <F6>. The value will be divided equally between the twelve months.
- If you are at the end of a year and are setting the budget for the next year, you could use the 'Difference' column. This allows you to set the budget by entering a value the budget is to differ from the actual value for the month e.g. you may enter '-100.00' (this is negative figure so the example relates to a Sales centre) to indicate that next year's budget is to be one hundred pounds greater than the actual value for the month in the current year. The Actual Value is only shown once the centre has gone through the Profit & Loss Audit Trail & Cleardown (or Balance Sheet Audit Trail & Cleardown if it is a Balance Sheet Centre).
- If you wish to display the previous year’s budget figures, press <F2> to show the values under the 'Last Year' column. You will see a Budget Variance box pop up in the top right corner of the screen. Making sure the cursor is pointing at the month to set, enter the percentage to increase/decrease the budget by. Press <Esc> if you don’t wish to use the function.
- To exit from here, press <Esc> and choose [Accept] to save the budget, [Ignore] to ignore any changes made or [Cancel] to carry on editing the budget.
Budget Reports
Go to " Nominal Ledger Maintenance Options Budget Maintenance".
| When you wish to run a budget report, it is wise to set the range of the report first or you will get a huge report listing all centres regardless of whether a budget has been set. |
- Go to " Range Screen".
- Enter the range of Nominal Codes to report on. For all centres leave the range blank, or for one centre enter the code in both fields.
- If you have set Groups on Nominal Codes you can enter a range of Groups or a single Group to report on.
- Enter the months to report on. Leave it set to 01 – 12 for all months or enter a range e.g. 03 to 03 to view March alone.
- If you wish to restrict the report by the amount the actual differs from the budget, enter the variance.
- You may specify a range of Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet areas to report on.
- When you have the range to base the reports on, tap Escape and select a report:
List Budgets : This will print a copy of the screen you set the budgets in, for each individual centre matching the range given.
Budget Report : This report shows a single line per centre and displays the total Actual, Budget, Difference and % Var for the months in the range.
Remember that these budget figures can also be used in the Accounts Report Generator.
