Budget Set-up (Accounting)

A step-by-step guide on how to configure Budgets in FMX for accurate spending control and reporting.

What are Budgets?

In FMX, it is important to distinguish between an Account and a Budget, as they serve different functions in your financial workflow.

• An Account represents a line item in your chart of accounts or a specific fund in your general ledger. Accounts are the financial repositories used to properly classify all debits and credits.
• A Budget is a spending limit or target you can set for a specific cost center, department, or project. By tracking transactions against these limits in real time, you gain immediate financial visibility within FMX, reducing the need to consult external ERP systems for budget status.

This guide focuses on the proper setup of your Budgets. Note that the Budgets feature is a component of the Accounting module and must be purchased for access.

Common Budget Use Cases

Budgets can be configured to track a wide variety of financial activities, including:

• Tracking operational vs. capital spending.
• Tracking asset replacement value against a budget.
• Tracking project estimates and bids using the Estimated Cost field on a Capital Project.
• Reimbursing budgets from revenue-generating activities, like facility rentals.
• Approving or denying Purchase Orders based on real-time budget availability.

The Budgets Tab

To begin, select Accounting from the left-side menu and navigate to the Budgets tab. This screen provides a high-level overview of your organization's budgets within FMX.

Understanding Budget Statuses

Each budget will have a status that changes based on its date range or manual updates:

• Active: The budget is currently within its start and end dates.
• Upcoming: The budget's start date is in the future.
• Expired: The budget's end date has passed.
• Retired: The budget has been manually retired and is no longer in use.
• Deleted: The budget has been manually deleted.

Reviewing Financial Health

The grid allows you to review each budget's financial health with the following columns:

• Budgeted amount: The total amount allocated to the budget.
• Actual amount: The net sum of all completed transactions (costs and revenue) applied to the budget.
• Remaining balance: The Budgeted amount minus the Actual amount.
• Upcoming amount: The sum of planned future costs from associated Capital Projects and Asset Replacements. To learn more, see our Using Budgets with Capital Planner guide.
• Available balance: The Remaining balance minus the Upcoming amount. This is the true amount of funds available to be spent.

Creating and Editing Budget Categories

1. From the Budgets tab, click the New budget category button.
2. Enter the required information:
   • Name: The descriptive name of the budget (e.g., "Annual HVAC Maintenance").
   • Code: The corresponding budget code or number.
   • Funding source: The source of the funds for the budget.
   • Budgeted Amount: The total amount allocated for this budget.
   • Start/End Date: The period for which this budget is active.

To change these details later, click the edit icon on the right side of an existing budget's row.

Retiring and Deleting Budgets

From the three-dot menu on the right side of each budget row, you can manually update its status.

• Retire: This status should be used for budgets that are no longer in use but have a transaction history you wish to preserve.
• Delete: This status should be used for budgets that were created by mistake and have no transaction history.

By default, the Budgets grid only shows active, upcoming, and expired budgets. To view retired or deleted budgets, click the Filter button and select the desired status from the Status checkboxes.

Once you have filtered for a retired or deleted budget, you can click the three-dot menu and select Reinstate or Undelete to make it active again.

Limiting Budget Usage

To ensure transactions are applied to the correct budget, you can limit how each budget is used.

• While creating or editing a budget, apply specific limits by Building, Module, Request Type, and Transaction Type.

Only transactions that meet these criteria will be available for assignment. Note: These limits are NOT applied during bulk transaction assignments.

Configuring Auto-Assignment

To improve efficiency, FMX can automatically assign transactions to the correct budget.

• How it works: If a transaction is created that meets the usage criteria for only one possible budget, FMX will automatically assign it, reducing manual data entry. Transactions that could apply to multiple budgets must be assigned manually from the Transactions tab.

Creating Sub-Budgets

For more granular financial tracking, you can create sub-budgets that roll up into a primary parent budget.

• To create a sub-budget, follow the steps for creating a new budget, but also select a Parent budget from the dropdown menu.

Viewing and Filtering Budget Transactions

Each budget includes a dedicated Transactions tab that provides a complete ledger of all associated costs.

1. From the Budgets grid, click on the name of the budget you wish to audit.
2. Select the Transactions tab.

From this ledger view, you can:

• Analyze Transactions: Review a detailed list of every transaction applied to the budget.
• Filter Your View: Click the Filter button to narrow down the transaction list by criteria such as Date Range or Module.
• Include Sub-Budget Data: To see a consolidated view, select the Include transactions from sub budgets option within the filter menu.
• Save Filters: After setting up a filter for a common reporting task, click the Save filter button to name it for future use.

Note on Revenue Transactions: Most transactions are costs that will reduce your available balance. However, some transactions, like an Invoice Payment, are treated as revenue. These will appear as negative numbers in the transaction list and will increase your available funds, effectively reimbursing the budget.

Integration with Capital Planner

Budgets are designed to work directly with the Capital Planner module. A single budget (e.g., "Annual Capital Improvements") can be used to fund one or more capital projects or capital assets. As costs are incurred on a project, they are tracked against both the project's Estimated Cost field and the overarching Budget it is tied to.

Learn how to Use Budgets with Capital Planner.