This article will teach you how to create, manage, and archive budgets in your Awardco platform. Please reference the video below for a comprehensive explanation.
Step by Step + Visual
Log In as an Admin and click on the Budgets tab. Here you'll see a list of all your company's current budgets and who they are assigned to.
Creating a Budget
You can create a new budget by clicking Edit Budgets and + Add Budget.
In this window you can input the details for the new budget. The name is how the budget will be identified in the Budgets tab for Admins and is how it will be displayed to the budget's users on the front end of the platform. The selected cost center must be created before the budget can be assigned to that cost center. Cost centers are used rarely, primarily by large organizations tracking hundreds of budgets across several business groups. To set up cost centers for your organization, contact your Client Success Manager.
Next, you will need to designate the budget as taxable or non-taxable. This has no impact on the operation of the budget and is for reporting purposes only. Finally, assign Budget Owners. Assigning a user as an Owner of the budget will not automatically give them access to the budget to use. The assignment of an Owner will be quite rare. To better understand the Owner assignment and its implications, please review the Budget Owners article. They will need to be added to the budget directly once the budget is created. See below for further instruction on assigning users to the budget. Both Budget Owners and Cost Center are not required fields. If you'd like Cost Center to be a required field, please reach out to your Awardco point-of-contact.
Enter the budget name, assign the cost center (if applicable), select whether or not the budget will be taxable, click OK to create the new budget.
Your new budget will appear in your list of current budgets.
Once a budget is created, you'll need to determine the balance as well as who will have access to use that budget for monetary recognitions.
Adjusting Budget Values
To add or remove funds from a budget, find the budget in the list of your platform budgets and click the circle icon to the far right of the budget and click 'Add/Remove Points.' You may also click on the balance of the budget to quickly access the 'Add/Remove Points' pop-up.
This will open the 'Add/Remove Points' window where you will be able to adjust the balance of the budget. To add points, enter a number in the Points or Funds fields. If your platform uses a 1:1 ratio for Points to Dollars, the Points and Funds fields will match. The ratio your platform uses is shown directly below the Points and Funds fields. To remove points from the budget, enter a negative number. For example, if you wanted to remove 200 points from the budget, you would enter -200. Click 'Update Balance' once you have entered the value.
If you receive an "Amount Not Valid" error message, this means there aren't enough points in the Company Account. Reference this article to find out how to add points to your platform.
You also have the ability to move funds directly from one budget to another. This is done by again, clicking the circle icon to the far right of the budget and clicking, 'Transfer Points Out.'
This will open the 'Transfer Points from [Budget Name]' window. Enter the budget you would like to move the funds to and enter the value you would like to transfer. Click 'Transfer' once you are ready to move the funds. If an insufficient funds error appears, this means there aren't sufficient points in the budget to transfer.
NOTE: Changes to budget balances are immediate. There will be no delay in the transfer of funds either from the company account or from one budget to another.
Assigning Access
Budget access is assigned by entering a User, Group, Metadata, or Role into the Budget Access field. By default, if a Group or Metadata value is assigned to a budget, all role types (Admin, Executive Manager, Group Manager, and Employee) will have access to this budget. If limiting Metadata/Group access to specific roles is desired, add the role name to the budget access parameters. Click into the budget's search field to search for the individual, Group, Metadata and/or role you would like to assign.
Let's take a look at the Birthday Budget in the screenshot above. The User 'Dan Anderson,' the Group 'Margaret Johnson,' and the Metadata subset 'Sales,' have all been assigned to the budget. This means that Dan Anderson, all users in Margaret Johnson's group, and every user in the Sales Department has access to the Birthday Budget. Let's assign the role 'Admin' and the Metadata subset 'Job Level: 1' to the Cyber Security budget. To do so, we would click next to the Cyber Security budget and enter, 'Admins' in the search. Once we select Admins from the dropdown, they are added to the budget.
Let's do the same for Job Level:1. To search metadata, enter the data value, '1.'
Now, all Admins in the Level 1 Job group have access to the Cyber Security budget.
Adding multiple metadata fields to a budget field acts as an AND statement. For example, if the metadata value "Department: Sales" and "role: Group manager" weree added, those with budget access would need to be in Sales AND be a Group Manager. When multiple metadata values within the same field are added, the budget access assumes an OR statement. If the metadata values Department: Sales and Department: Marketing were added, those in either the Sales or Marketing departments would have budget access.
Budget Groups
Another way to establish budget access using metadata is to create budget groups. Budget Groups are budgets that are created based on a metadata field; they guarantee that every user has access to a budget in the metadata group, regardless of organizational changes within the platform. To find out more about how to establish budget groups, visit this article.
Adjusting Budget Settings
To change the name, cost center, taxability, or the Owner, click on the "..." to the right of the budget and click 'Edit Budget.' This will open the 'Edit Budget' window which has the same fields as the 'Create Budget' window. Enter your desired changes and click save. You also have the ability to archive a budget from this window. Archiving a budget will remove the budget from the system. You may also archive the budget by clicking the circle icon and clicking 'Archive Budget.' This will prompt a confirmation page to appear where you will be asked to confirm your archive request.
If you archive a budget and wish to reactive it, access the Inactive tab at the top of the budgets page, select the "..." to the right of the budget, and click "Activate Budget."
Searching by Budget/Group/User/Metadata
If you want to search for information for a specific budget, see which groups or users have access to which budgets, or see which metadata is being used to specify budget access, just use the search bar above the list of active budgets. Type in the search criteria and hit enter to perform the search.
Searching for a user's name will show you all of the budgets that user is attached to. Searching for a group will show you all of the budgets that group is attached to. Searching for a budget's name will show you which groups and users are assigned to it. Searching by metadata will show all budgets that use that metadata value as budget access parameters.
Updating Budgets via CSV File
For a quick overview of every budget, or to make bulk adjustments, you can now download the list of budgets to a .csv file, make any changes you like, then upload the .csv with all of your changes (reference our Managing Budgets Via CSV File article for more information.) To get the .csv file downloaded, click Upload CSV in the top right hand corner of the budget page. Then click on budgets.csv. This will download the budgets .csv to your computer.
When you open the file be sure to save it with the date you downloaded it. The file will show you information such as a list of your budgets, each budget's monetary balance, and who has budget access. Any changes you make to this file can be applied to your budgets when you upload the file.
Note: Do NOT change the Id or Parent Budget Ids. These are auto-generated numbers that our system uses to differentiate between various budgets that may have the same name across different companies (e.g. service awards, which is a very popular budget name for lots of companies).
You can change the name of each budget simply by typing the new name in the name column.
The balance column will let you change the monetary amount in each budget. When you upload the file, each budget will be reset to whatever value you have put in the cell in the balance column. To add or subtract from the existing balance, type in "+" or "-" before the number in the balance column.
Note: You will need to format the balance column as text cells for the "+" and "-" signs to stay in the cells.
The groups column will let you change the various groups that will have access to each budget. The users column will tell you which users have access to a specific budget.
You can add a new budget to your file which will create a new budget in the system when you upload a new file. Leave the ID cell blank; our system will assign a new ID when the budget is created. When you are certain you have your information correct, click Upload CSV, select your file, and click OK. If you want to archive any budgets left off the CSV file, toggle Archive before uploading.
Your list of active budgets will then reflect all of the information you entered into the .csv file.
If you have any questions, please contact Awardco Admin Support.