The Budgets feature of the platform is a helpful tool that allows you to set up a budget by period, see your budgetary impact before placing an order, and track your spend and budget left throughout the period. The budgets page is listed by GL Account, Type, Sales Forecast, Cost %, Budget, Budgeted, Spent, and Remaining.
Once your budget is configured properly you will see your budgetary impact on orders before they are placed, like you can see in the image below:
Orders must be linked to invoices upon receiving to ensure that the difference between the order amount and the invoice amount can be reconciled on the budget (the invoice amount will replace the order amount).
Set up Budget Periods at Store Level
1. Navigate to Trackers > Budgets from the navigation panel at the left.
2. Click +New Budget and select the dates of the first period you want to add, then click +New Budget to save it.
Note: When selecting a date range for the budget, the date ranges cannot overlap with any historic budgets that have been created prior.
Repeat these steps for each budget period you want to add.
Creating a Budget
1. From Trackers > Budgets click the Budget Range that you want to enter data for.
2. By default the page will be blank. Click +Add at the bottom and then select either Add Account to select a specific GL Account, or select Add All Accounts to have all your GL Accounts added to the budget. If you select Add All Accounts you can easily type in the relevant data to either the Sales Forecast, Cost %, or Budgeted Amount value for each row.
*If you use Classes, you'll have an additional dropdown to append to the GL Account.
3. If you select Add Account you will then have the option to enter the budget data by either Budget Amount or Sales Forecast. If you select Budget Amount you can enter the budgeted amount for the period as well as the Cost %, and then the system will calculate your Sales Forecast using this data.
Alternatively, you can select Sales Forecast and enter Cost % or Sales Forecast, and the system will calculate your Budget Amount from there. Once you've entered the appropriate values click +Add Budget Account.
GL Mapping
An important component of your budget being able to function properly is having all your Categories mapped to the relevant GL Code in Books. These GL Mappings are used to impact the budget from the order, as orders do not otherwise have GLs associated with them. To set up your GL Mappings you need access to Books. Please see the article titled Mapping General Ledger (GL) Accounts for further details on this process. If you'd like to check what GLs your Categories are mapped to you can do this by clicking your name at the top right > Store Settings > Item Categories, there you will see what GL Account (if any) is allocated to each Category.
Importing your Budget
If you would like to keep your Budget consistent in all stores or prefer to use the same budget each week. You can create a template to import into all your other outlets/stores. Please note that when using this template you would be using your COA to create the accounts in your budget. If you are using this across multiple stores you would need to make sure your COA matches in every store.
First, you want to create your main budget in one location. You can use this as a template to import. Once the Budget is created Click the Import button in blue.
Select if the budget is by Budget Amount or Sales Forecast, then click the download button.
This will download a template as a .xlsx file. You can then upload the file into any other stores you may have in Craftable.
To Upload the template simply navigate to the Budgets page and click + New Budget. Select the dates for your new budget and click save. Once the new dated budget is created click to open the budget. Go to Import, then click Browse to locate the template on your device. Once the file has been selected just click the blue Import button to save it.