Phases Table

If you plan to use iterations in preparing your budget, you first need to add records to Budget Preparation's Phases table. Phase records let you to determine the budget iteration data to use for each of the three standard budget levels: Requested, Recommended, and Approved.

Phase records also let you define approval levels beyond the three standard levels. For example, your budget procedures may call for two levels of approval at the Requested level, two more at the Recommended level, and a final Approved level.

The standard procedures for adding, updating, deleting, and printing table records are covered in the section Overview of Reference Tables. The default file name of the Phase Table report is phase.rpt.

Menu Path: Budget Preparation > Reference Tables > Reference Tables > Phases

Planning Phase Records

Your site's use of the Phases table should depend on collaborative decisions about the following issues:

Does our budget process require budget approval levels beyond the three provided in the standard Budget Preparation worksheets (Requested, Recommended, and Approved)?
How should we identify and name our phase records? This is Important because budget administrators need to know the correct record to select when closing a budgetary phase or when creating a budget iteration during the budget process.

Based on these decisions, you can develop a code-and-description setup for building the Phases table that your budget personnel will find meaningful. You will later associate your iteration records with the phases you establish here.

As a direct approach to identifying phase records, you could use a number combined with an abbreviation for the standard approval level tied to the phase. For example, if you are using two phases at the Requested level, two phases at the Recommended level, and one phase at the Approved level, your phases could be coded and titled as follows:

Code	Description
P1REQ	Phase 1 Requested
P2REQ	Phase 2 Requested
P1REC	Phase 1 Recommended
P2REC	Phase 2 Recommended
APRVD	Approved Phase

Important

The final budget cannot be posted to Fund Accounting until all phases in the Phases table are closed. A closed phase has a final iteration defined for at least one of the three budget ledgers, Expenditure, Revenue, or Project. A single phase can have final iterations defined for all three ledgers.

Fields

Field	Description
Year	Current budget year defined in the Budget Preparation Profile. The year forms part of the key to identifying a phase record. Therefore, you can re-use the same Phase code from one year to the next. Display only.
Phase	Unique code identifying the phase record. Character/5 Before entering records in this table, you should plan a standard convention for these codes so budget administrators can easily recognize the appropriate phase based on its code.
Description	Full description for the phase record. Again, use a standard naming convention for phases. Character/25 For example, you could identify the standard budget approval level tied to the phase (Requested, Recommended, or Approved), prefaced by the phase’s priority at the approval level. Using this method, the second phase at the Recommended level could be titled PHASE 2 RECOMMENDED.
Report Label 1	First column header to use when this phase is included in the Generic Report for one of the budgetary ledgers. Character/13
Report Label 2	Second column header to use when this phase is included in the Generic Report for one of the budgetary ledgers. Character/13 For information on the Generic Report options for the Expenditure, Revenue, and Project Ledgers, refer to Budget Preparation Reports.
Final Expenditure Iteration	Number for the iteration associated with this phase through the Expenditure Ledger’s Close Phase option in the Budget Administrator center. This iteration stores final Expenditure Ledger budget data for this budgetary phase.
Final Revenue Iteration	Number for the iteration associated with this phase through the Revenue Ledger’s Close Phase option in the Budget Administrator center. This iteration stores final Revenue Ledger budget data for this budgetary phase.
Final Project Iteration	Number for the iteration associated with this phase through the Project Ledger’s Close Phase option in the Budget Administrator center. This iteration stores final Project Ledger budget data for the related budgetary phase.