Budgets
Set budgets by company, contract or branch by any period.
Budgets can be fixed or rolling, with blocks, locks, escalations or warnings.
Budgets
A comprehensive budget module is being developed.
If you would like to control your uniform budgets on our portal, this new module is built for you.
Budgets can be controlled by entitlement against members of staff. However, more powerful budget features can be built around portal objects.
With the addition of budget periods and escalation controls, you have a powerful tool to control your finance.
Portal objects are any entity that we can attach a budget to, for example:
Company - a corporate budget.
Branch - an office, site or branch budget.
Contract - a customer contract budget.
Wardrobe - a uniform collection budget.
Buyer - a portal user or administrator budget.
Budget Objects
Budget periods are a period in time for your budget. For example:
Yearly Calendar - an annual budget period.
Yearly financial - an annual budget period.
Monthly Calendar - a monthly budget period.
Weekly Calendar - a weekly budget period.
Bespoke - a unique period created by you.
Budget Period
There are two budgets methods available fixed and rolling.
Fixed budgets have a value placed against the budget period. this value is fixed and even if budget remains (or deficit) at the end of the period it is NOT carried over to the next budget period.
Rolling budgets again have a value for the period but if there is a balance of budget remaining (or a deficit) at the end of a period it is carried over to the next budget period.
Next look at actions, what your budget actually does.
Budget Method
Budget actions are how the budget reacts to being breached, there are five to consider.
No action - here the budget does not restrict the placing of orders it is simply used as a guide and reporting tool to compare actual spend with forecast spend.
Advise - a budget threshold can be added, say 80% and the buyer would be advised when this total is reached.
Warn - If the budget(s) is breached, the buyer is warned on placing the order.
Escalate - the buyer is warned and the order blocked from checkout and escalated to a high level user for checkout, edit or rejection.
Block - the order is simply blocked and left in draft until budget is available.
Budget Actions
Creation and control of budgets is a professional and confidential action carried out by a high level portal user from your company, often from finance, a finance web wizard.
Templates are provided and guidance given to create and control the budgets, but as budgets can prevent ordering, the ultimate control is yours and can cannot be overridden.
You can operate budgets in parallel with each other, for example, a company budget and branch budget, but we would only recommend locks being applied to one at a time as this can be frustrating for the buyer.
Budgets can also be visible, but not editable, or hidden to buyers.
We would appreciate your ideas on budgets as we develop the system.
Maybe you would prefer to control budgets on your own system, in which case you should look at our section on ‘Punch Out’.