Budgets in Awardco are the key to funding your recognition programs, acting as dedicated virtual wallets for specific purposes or teams. They allow you to allocate and track funds effectively, ensuring your recognition initiatives remain within financial guidelines. This article will walk you through the fundamental aspects of managing these resources. We'll cover how to create new budgets tailored to your needs, manage them by adjusting funds and assigning access, and finally, how to archive inactive budgets to maintain an organized platform.
- Accessing Budgets
- Creating a Budget
- Adjusting Budget Values
- Assigning Budget Access
- Budget Groups
- Auto-Reloading Budgets
- Adjusting Budget Settings
- Searching by Budget/Group/User/Metadata
- Updating Budgets via CSV File
Accessing Budgets
- Log in to the platform.
- On the homepage, select the Admin button at the bottom of the left navigation menu.
- Click Finance, then Budgets from the left navigation menu.
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 Manage Budgets and + Add Budget.
In the window that appears, you can input the new budget's details. The Name field determines how the budget will be identified in the Budgets tab for administrators and how it will appear to users on the front end. The Cost Center field allows you to associate the budget with a specific cost center. Note that the desired cost center must be created before it can be assigned to a budget. Cost centers are typically used by larger organizations that need to track numerous budgets across different business units. To set up cost centers for your organization, please contact your Client Success Manager.
Next, specify if the budget is taxable or non-taxable for reporting only; this doesn't affect its function. You can also assign Budget Owners, but this doesn't grant them access to the budget. For more details, see the Budget Owners article. Users who need budget access must be added after creation (see "Assigning Budget Access" below). Both Budget Owners and Cost Center are optional. To require Cost Center, contact your Awardco representative.
Enter the budget name, assign a cost center (if applicable), select the taxability status, and click OK.
Your newly created budget will now appear in your list of current budgets.
Once a budget is established, you'll need to define its initial balance and determine which users will have access to utilize it for monetary recognitions.
Adjusting Budget Values
To add or remove funds from a budget, locate the budget in your platform's budget list. Click the circle icon on the far right of the budget entry and select 'Add/Remove Points'. Alternatively, you can quickly access the 'Add/Remove Points' pop-up by clicking directly on the budget's current balance.
This action will open the 'Add/Remove Points' window, allowing you to modify the budget's balance. To increase the funds, enter a positive number in either the Points or Funds fields. If your platform operates on a 1:1 Points to Dollars ratio, the values in these fields will be identical. The specific ratio used by your platform is displayed directly below these fields. To decrease the budget, enter a negative number (e.g., to remove 200 points, enter -200). Once you've entered the desired value, click 'Update Balance'.
The "Amount Not Valid" error means your Company Account lacks enough points. See this article to learn how to add points.
You also have the capability to transfer funds directly from one budget to another. To do this, again, click the circle icon to the far right of the budget and select 'Transfer Points Out'.
This will open the 'Transfer Points from [Budget Name]' window. Specify the destination budget by entering its name and then enter the amount you wish to transfer. Click 'Transfer' to complete the move. If an "insufficient funds" error appears, it means the originating budget does not have enough points to fulfill the transfer.
NOTE: All changes to budget balances are immediate. There will be no delay in the transfer of funds, whether originating from the company account or another budget.
Assigning Budget Access
Budget access is granted by entering a User, Group, Metadata, or Role into the Budget Access field. By default, when a Group or Metadata value is assigned to a budget, all role types (Admin, Executive Manager, Group Manager, and Employee) will have access to that budget. If you need to restrict Metadata/Group access to specific roles, simply include the role name within the budget access parameters. Click within the budget's search field to search for the desired individual, Group, Metadata, and/or role you wish to assign.
Looking at the 'Birthdays’ Budget in the example above, the User 'Dan Anderson,' the Group 'Margaret Johnson,' and the Metadata subset 'Sales' have all been assigned. This means Dan Anderson, every user within Margaret Johnson's group, and every user in the Sales Department now have access to the Birthday Budget. Let's consider assigning the role 'Admin' and the Metadata subset 'Job Level: 1' to the 'Cyber Security' budget. To achieve this, we would click next to the Cyber Security budget and enter 'Admins' in the search field. Once 'Admins' appears in the dropdown menu, select it to add the role to the budget's access.
We can follow the same process for 'Job Level: 1'. To search for metadata, enter the data value, '1.'
Now, all Admins who are also in the Level 1 Job group have access to the Cyber Security budget.
When multiple metadata fields are added to a single budget's access field, it functions as an AND statement. For instance, if "Department: Sales" and "role: Group manager" were both added, only users who are in the Sales department and are Group Managers would have budget access. Conversely, when multiple metadata values within the same field are added, the budget access operates as an OR statement. If the metadata values "Department: Sales" and "Department: Marketing" were added, users in either the Sales or the Marketing departments would have budget access.
Budget Groups
Budget Groups manage access by grouping budgets based on a metadata field. Users linked to a metadata value automatically get access to the corresponding budget, even if organizational changes occur. For setup details, see this article.
Auto-Reloading Budgets
Budget Auto-Reload automatically refills budget balances on a set schedule, saving time and ensuring funds are always available for recognition. You can set rules for reload frequency (weekly, monthly), points amount (flat or per headcount), and target budgets or groups. This keeps your recognition programs running smoothly without budget shortages. For setup and management details, see the Budget Auto-Reload support article.
Adjusting Budget Settings
To modify a budget's name, cost center, taxability status, or assigned Owner, click the "..." icon to the right of the budget entry and select 'Edit Budget'. This will open the 'Edit Budget' window, which contains the same fields as the 'Create Budget' window. You also have the option to add a budget reload rule. Make your desired changes and click Save. From this window, you also have the option to archive the budget. Alternatively, you can archive a budget by clicking the circle icon and selecting 'Archive Budget'. This will trigger a confirmation prompt where you'll need to confirm your archive request.
Note: If editing the owners of a Manager Budget Group, the ownership edited on the group level will change the ownership of every budget under that group and reflect the same ownership. If you want different owners for different budgets under the budget group, be sure to edit the owners on an individual budget level.
If you archive a budget and later need to reactivate it, navigate to the Inactive tab at the top of the budgets page. Locate the desired budget, click the "..." icon to its right, and select 'Activate Budget'.
Searching by Budget/Group/User/Metadata
If you need to find information related to a specific budget, see which groups or users have access to particular budgets, or identify which budgets utilize a specific metadata value for access control, simply use the search bar located above the list of active budgets. Enter your search terms and press Enter to initiate the search.
Searching by a user's name will display all the budgets that user is currently associated with. Similarly, searching for a group name will show all the budgets that group has access to. Searching for a budget's name will reveal all the groups and users assigned to it. Finally, searching by a metadata value will list all the budgets that use that specific metadata value as part of their budget access parameters.
Updating Budgets via CSV File
To view all your budgets or make bulk edits, download the current budget list as a .csv file. After editing, upload it back to apply changes (see our Managing Budgets Via CSV File article for details). Click Upload CSV at the top right of the budget page, then select budgets.csv to download.
When you open the downloaded file, it's a good practice to save it with the date of download for record-keeping. The file will contain key information such as a list of your budgets, each budget's current monetary balance, and details on who has budget access. Any modifications you make to this file can be applied to your live budgets when you upload it back into the system.
Note: It is crucial that you do NOT alter the values in the Id or Parent Budget Ids columns. These are unique, auto-generated identifiers that our system uses to distinguish between different budgets, especially those that might share the same name across various companies (for example, "service awards" is a common budget name).
You can easily change the name of any budget by typing the new name directly into the corresponding cell in the Name column.
The Balance column allows you to adjust the monetary amount within each budget. When you upload the modified file, each budget's balance will be reset to the exact value you have entered in its respective cell in this column. To add to or subtract from the existing balance, type either a "+" or "-" symbol before the numerical value in the Balance column.
Note: To ensure that the "+" and "-" signs are retained in the cells, you will need to format the balance column as text cells in your spreadsheet program.
The Groups column enables you to modify the various groups that will have access to each budget. The Users column indicates which individual users currently have access to a specific budget.
Add a budget's auto-reload rule by entering its ID in the ReloadRuleId column or its name in the ReloadRuleName column. Find these on the Auto-Reload Rules tab.
You can also add a brand-new budget to your system by adding a new row to the file. In this case, leave the Id cell blank; our system will automatically assign a unique ID when the new budget is created upon upload. Once you've carefully reviewed your changes and are confident in their accuracy, click Upload CSV, select your modified file, and click OK. If you wish to archive any budgets that are not included in the uploaded CSV file, toggle the Archive option before clicking OK.
Your list of active budgets will then be updated to reflect all the information you entered into the .csv file.
If you have any questions, please contact Awardco Admin Support.