08.02 Planning Overview

This course is for the planning process owner — the person responsible for setting up, running, and reporting on a budget or forecast cycle in FastClose. By the end of it you will be able to build and distribute planning input templates, collect submissions from contributors, produce actuals-vs-budget reports, and close out a planning cycle cleanly.

This is not a system administration course. By the time this course begins, an IT administrator will already have switched on the Planning module, configured the dimensions, and prepared the data store. If that has not yet happened, refer to the Planning & Budgeting Setup guide first.

It is assumed that suitable P&L and Balance Sheet hierarchies have been built prior to looking at planning. If not - stop and do that now. A quick start to build a P&L can be found here, with more detail on building hierarchies here.

There is also a quick start guide to get a rapid overview, available here.

The planning cycle at a glance

A FastClose planning cycle follows the same sequence every time, regardless of whether the focus is an annual budget, a quarterly reforecast, or a rolling estimate:

Create a scenario — a named container that will hold this cycle’s figures.
Choose your level of granularity — decide at what level contributors will enter numbers (account code, P&L line, or full GL account with cost centres).
Build your input template — configure a FastClose report that lets contributors submit figures to that scenario.
Test before distributing — verify that submission works end-to-end and clean up test data.
Distribute to contributors — send out workbooks scoped to each person’s area.
Collect submissions — contributors enter and submit their figures via the Excel Add-In.
Review and report — run actuals-vs-budget reports as figures come in.
Close the cycle — audit submissions, lock the scenario, and archive.

The course follows that sequence. Each module covers one step in enough depth to build confidence. The course starts simple — planning against account codes with no cost centre split — and introduces additional complexity (P&L hierarchies, multi-dimension planning, contributor workbooks) only once the fundamentals are solid.

What’s available on first login

FastClose ships ready to plan. Two things are available immediately:

A default planning scenario, code BUD. All the standard planning templates reference this by default, so a test submission is possible the moment Designer is opened — no setup required.
Prebuilt GL planning templates, available from File → Home inside FastClose Designer. The two most useful starting points are GL 06 Planning / Replanning This Year and GL 06 Planning for Next Year. Both are used throughout the first half of the course.