Budget Preparation - System Features
The PowerSchool ERP Budget Preparation System is designed to facilitate setting up a fiscal year budget. To provide flexibility and accommodate a wide range of possibilities, the system includes numerous features for streamlining the budgeting process.
Following is a listing of the primary features of the Budget Preparation System:
PowerSchool ERP Features
The Budget Preparation System offers the following features, which apply to all PowerSchool ERP software:
Utilizes a web-based interface that makes it easy to access options, enter data, and manage records.
Allows keeping multiple pages displayed for entering data, maintaining records, and running processes.
Shares the same security system used by your organization's other PowerSchool ERP software. Through this system, you can restrict access to specific menu options and budget units on a user-by-user basis.
Provides drop-down lists and lookup pages for table-verified fields, so users can quickly find and select records.
Includes both basic and advanced search functions to select, display, and print records.
General Features
Uses a separate table to store your budget. As a result, you can add and delete accounts, enter amounts, generate projections, and perform other functions while protecting the integrity of your Fund Accounting data.
Interfaces directly with the Fund Accounting System, enabling you to use budget and financial data from the current year as the starting point for building a new year budget.
Provides an option to upload budget data from Excel spreadsheets.
Enables you to add organizations, accounts, and projects, which can be added to Fund Accounting when you post your budget.
Supports up to nine reporting levels for organizations and eight levels for projects.
Provides its own reference tables, several of which duplicate tables found in Fund Accounting. These tables allow Budget Preparation to store the data extracted from Fund Accounting. They also enable you to add records and change table information without affecting your live accounting data.
Budgeting Features
Utilizes two budget centers, one for budget administrators and one for other employees:
The Budget Administrator center enables employees authorized as budget administrators to develop budgets and perform system functions, such as extracting data from Fund Accounting, setting up iterations, generating projections, and posting budgets to Fund Accounting.
The Budget Entry center enables other employees to develop budgets for designated accounts and approval levels.
Provides separate budget worksheets to develop Expenditure, Revenue, and Project ledger budgets. Worksheets are accessed through the budget centers.
After extracting data from a ledger in Fund Accounting, administrators can select and display specific records, view budget figures for all approval levels, add and delete accounts, and enter base (previous year budget) and new amounts.
Employees can perform the same worksheet procedures as administrators, but at one approval level per worksheet.
Provides three standard approval levels: Requested (department), Recommended (intermediate), and Approved (final). Additional approval levels can be accommodated through the iteration process.
Allows developing and saving different versions of a budget through the use of iterations and phases.
Iterations are separate files that enable budget personnel to enter and project data for either different versions or selected portions of a budget. For example, employees can use iterations to develop their own budgets. Information from these versions can be consolidated into a final budget. As another possibility, iterations can be created for individual departments or specific functions, such as payroll costs or general fund revenues.
Phases, which identify different stages of an iteration, are primarily intended for storing data for the three standard budget approval levels: Requested, Recommended, and Approved. They also give you a way to apply additional approval levels. When one level of approval is completed, the phase for that level is closed, and the next phase opened.
Enables budget administrators to move budgets for selected accounts from one approval level to the next.
Allows budget administrators to generate budget projections for the upcoming fiscal year and four future years. Projections can also be run to determine an account's expenditures or revenues in the current year based on year-to-date activity.
Enables you to view complete information on accounts in Detail pages. This includes actual and budgeted amounts for two previous years, current year, budget year, and up to four future years. The budget year values include a breakdown of base and new amounts for all approval levels. You can access Detail pages through the account lists in budget worksheets.
Offers a Notes page to either itemize individual amounts associated with a selected account or enter general notes regarding the account's new year budget.
Generates more than 50 reports to track and analyze budgets.
Allows you to create new ledgers for the upcoming fiscal year.
Enables you to post budgets to Fund Accounting.