BudgetPath adds capabilities to NAV for active budget control and encumbrance posting (recognition of outstanding purchase order amounts against budgets). Catch budget overruns before they happen, rather than after-the-fact through reporting. Make informed decisions at the time an overrun occurs to handle it proactively, avoiding the headache of having to explain it later.
BudgetPath functionality is built on top of NAV dimensions. Standard NAV posting flows are used with no special new fields. Continue to use base NAV analysis tools and reports fully, with no reliance on extensive new functionality. BudgetPath provides extensive new capabilities through an elegant design that leverages existing structures and tools.
The key features of BudgetPath are:
- Budget posting controls
- Set up simple or complex controls around postings that exceed budgeted amounts (based on standard NAV G/L budgets).
- Control budgets by any of the 8 global dimensions if needed (to match the breakdown of budget definitions).
- Define very specific controls (down to a single G/L account / dimension combination for each accounting period) or manage amounts in more general ways. For example:
- Allow amounts to exceed budgets for a given accounting period, but implement the control if the amount exceeds the total budget for a given quarter or the entire year.
- Allow amounts for an individual account to exceed the budget, but establish a control to prevent the actual across a range of accounts from exceeding the overall budget for that range of accounts.
- Define controls as firm posting blocks so that only authorized users can post the excessive transactions, or allow transactions to go through but send a notification email.
- Budget threshold warnings
- Deal with potential budget issues even earlier by setting up warning notifications when actual postings come within a specified percentage of the defined budget.
- Budget notification emails
- Automatically receive notification emails when budgets are hit, or when warning thresholds are reached.
- Define specific recipients for notification emails, or assign budget owners to dimension values to route notifications.
- Transaction limit controls
- Define individual transaction limits based on dimension values. For example, a “LAPTOP” dimension value for an Expense Type dimension can have a limit of $1,500 defined. Any individual transaction over that limit will be subject to controls/notifications.
- Pre-posting budget checks
- Users are provided with pre-posting budget check tools to identify potential issues before they attempt to post (or release a purchase order in the case of encumbrance amounts).
- Budget issues are clearly outlined for users to address or discuss with management before posting.
- Encumbrance posting
- Automatic posting of outstanding amounts to the G/L upon purchase order release so that those amounts are considered against budgets.
- Posting is handled through a user-defined dimension value, making it easy to omit these amounts from financial reports and queries.