Project Budgeting Options for Administrators

The Budget Administrator center's Project section provides the following options for preparing future year expenditure budgets: Display Budget, Apply/Move Budget, Save iteration, Load iteration, Edit Iteration, and Close Phase. These options should be used after you set up your tables and run extractions of Fund Accounting data.

The PowerSchool ERP Budget Preparation System has two budget centers: Budget Administrator center and Budget Entry center. Both pages provide options for preparing the Project Ledger budget. However, the Budget Administrator center includes additional options budget administrators can use to maintain and save budget worksheet data.

Project Budget Administrator Options

Project budget administrators have access to the following options, in addition to those available to regular budget personnel:

Apply/Move Budget - Lets you apply budget projection percentages to selected Project Ledger accounts or copy budget figures from one standard approval level to the next.
Save Iteration - Lets you save budget figures to an iteration at any of the standard approval levels for selected Project Ledger accounts. An iteration is a template where you can save budget figures from the project budget worksheet.
Load Iteration - Lets you load budget figures from an iteration into the project budget worksheet at any of the standard approval levels for selected Project Ledger accounts.
Edit Iteration - Lets you change data in an iteration without loading it into the live project budget worksheet.
Close Phase - Lets you close out a budgetary phase by assigning the iteration containing the final Project Ledger data for that phase.

These options allow you to facilitate the budget process for yourself and other budget personnel. They control the data that displays in the project budget worksheet.

The project budget worksheet is accessed through the Display Budget option in the Budget Administrator center's Project section. This option displays the Update Project Budget - Administrator page where you can:

Search for and list specific Project Ledger accounts.
Make manual changes to the budget amounts for ledger accounts.
Add records to the Project Ledger.
Delete existing ledger accounts, if needed.

Project Budgeting Basics

As in the PowerSchool ERP Fund Accounting System, the project accounting records in Budget Preparation allow up to eight reporting levels. However, budget increases and decreases can only be applied to the lowest organizational reporting level defined in Budget Preparation's Project List.

For example, if you use four project reporting levels and the levels are Project, Function, Component, and Task, you budget for the lowest level, Task. For example, if the Project is Playground Renovation, Function is Equipment, Component is Swing Sets, and Task is Labor, your budgeting projections and entries would be applied to the project/account combination used in the Project List for Labor.

The number of reporting levels and the titles of the levels are set up in the Budget Preparation Profile. Note that the examples in this section display asterisks before and after the field titles to indicate that they are user-defined. For simplicity, we use a three-level structure: Project, Function, and Task. If your system has more levels than this, the additional fields will appear in the applicable Budget Preparation pages.

As with Budget Preparation's expenditure and revenue options, there are three methods for creating a project budget:

The system generates budget year projections using percentages defined in Budget Prep's Project List and Account List records. Budget administrators can apply these projections to selected Project Ledger accounts or copy budget figures from one standard approval level to the next using the Apply/Move Budget option in the Budget Administrator center's Project section.
Budget administrators can directly enter increases and decreases for individual project/accounts using the Update Project Budget - Administrator window. This page can be displayed by selecting the Display Budget option in the Budget Administrator center's Project section.
Employees can directly enter increases and decreases using the Project Budget Process page. This page can be displayed by selecting the Requested, Recommended, Approved, or Future Years option in the Budget Entry center's Project section.