07.01 Getting Started with Planning & Budgeting

These instructions assume that an IT administrator has already completed the initial setup steps: see Planning & Budgeting Setup.

GL Budgeting Templates & Solutions

The fastest way to get going is by starting from one of the standard budgeting templates or solutions supplied by FastClose, shown below:

Please ask FastClose Support for these if they aren't visible within the General Ledger module of the Templates tab or in the FastClose Planning folder of the Solutions tab.

Open one of these.

Define a Planning Scenario

FastClose will have created an example planning scenario with code 'BUD'. The provided templates and solutions reference this scenario by default.

Further scenarios can be created within Designer, by clicking on the Scenarios button in the Layout tab of the ribbon.

Click Add Planning Scenario and enter a code and a caption e.g. REVBUD, Revised Budget:

Level of Detail

Different planning scenarios can support the submission of planning data at different levels of detail, and the level of detail required needs to be considered before submitting data or passing planning reports to contributors.

By Dimension

Whilst users will certainly want to submit planning data against the chart of accounts, whether they would want to break those numbers up and provide them by department, division, cost center, organisational unit etc... can be varied depending on the needs of the organisation and the planning process.

So if the desire is to have a planning scerario where consolidated numbers are collected that cover the entire business, the Designer would amend the template and remove all down axis dimensions, except the account dimension - and save that as a report for use during planning.

However, if the process requires for example, departmental heads to provide numbers for their own departments, then the template would be amended to include both Department and the Accounts dimensions - and that report design saved for use by planning contributors.

By Accounting Hierarchy Node

As well as being possible to enter planning numbers against the individual accounts nominals in a trial balance format, it is also possible to enter them against a chart of accounts structure.

In its simplest mode, this allows planning users to see how the predicted numbers roll up into the P&L as whole.

But it's possibleto go a stage further and configure aggregated nodes higher up in the chart of accounts structure as planning input levels. For example if the planning process doesn't require travel costs to be broken out by nominals representing say, car fuel expenses vs train ticketing expenses - the P&L can be setup with an aggregated "Travel" node with numbers expected to be provided at that level.

It is important that a manager implementing a planning process considers and configures these data entry reports to the right level of detail both in terms of the organizational units and the levels within the chart of accounts structure, before passing the report out to planning contributors.

Once the dessign stage is complete, it's a good idea to the test the submission report.

Test Submit in Designer

Run the report and test submission by right-clicking on a yellow coloured result cell and entering a number. If you can't submit in a budget column - the cell isn't yellow - choose 'Why Can't I Submit?' from the context menu to find out why.

Test Submit in Excel

Save the report and open it using the FastClose Excel Add-In. Run the report, enter some values in the budget cells, and click Submit.

Delete Test Submissions

To clear out any submissions you made as a test, edit the scenario in Designer and click Delete All Submissions.

Submission Report Design

Whislt the fastest way to get going with planning is by starting from one of the standard budgeting templates as described above, should it be necessary to design a submission report from scratch, here are some steps to note:

1. Start with the GL Balances template: the GL Balances 'cube' upon which this template is based is the only one currently supported by FastClose Planning & Budgeting.

2. Tick the Enable Planning checkbox in the Layout tab of the ribbon; this makes the Scenario dimension available in this report:

3. Add the Scenario dimension to the columns, either in the Rows and Columns dialog or via the Field Explorer. Example based on Epicor:

In addition if working with Epicor, there are some specific steps

4. For Epicor, select a single book in the filters e.g. MAIN:

5. Optional but very helpful: change the caption of the Balance measure from 'Actual' to 'Balance'. This is because your budgeting submissions are going to use the Balance measure too and it gets confusing if budget columns have 'Actual' in their heading.