TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Type of Budgets in FCX
• Budget Planning
  • Create a Build Plan Budget Template
    • Budget Item Card 
• How to create a Budget
  • Automatically
  • Manually

Type of Budgets in FCX

Build Plan Budget is a tool to estimate the total cost of a Build Plan.

Regular Budget is used when it is important to come up with detailed estimates for all the Project or Build Plan costs. It may include not only planned revenue and labor costs, but many other costs associated with Project/Build Plan, such as material procurement costs, operating costs, and so on.

Budget Planning

Create a Build Plan Budget Template

Budget Templates streamlines the Build Plan Budget creation. With the Budget template, we can determine the relevant budget items for different project or lines of business. We can also include a ballpark estimate of Build Plan costs and labor hours for more specificity in a Budget template. For example, when we have already expectations of how much it will cost and how many labor hours it will take for the particular Build Plan. 

1. To create a Budget Template, open the FSM Budgets Templates reference.

The reference is fully accessible for the Budget Managers user group. Employees of FSMFinancial user group has also full access except delete records.

2. Create a new record.

3. Fill out the Budget Card and save the record.

Name — custom name of the Budget template record.

Project — a Project for which you create the Budget template.

Overhead Type — to define a specific type of Overhead allowance and distinguish between different project types that may present different overhead burden on your organization. The percentage for such expenses is determined in the Calculation Specification reference and subtracted from the Budget's Gross Profit Margin.

Comments — important notes, details and so on. 

Estimated Costs table includes budget items. The budget item is a classifier of costs incurred in the Build Plan, for instance Labor Costs, Material Costs, external Subcontractors job, etc.

Budget Item Card 

There are a default set of Budget Items in FCX. However, you can always create a required one to include it into the Budget.

Each Budget Item contains:

Name — custom name of the Budget Item.

Class — Budget Item Class. It presents different categories of budget items, for instance: labor, materials, outside contractor, etc.

Cost — the cost per Item unit.

UOM — the Budget Item unit of measurement. There are only two types of UOM in a Budget: 1 EACH (you can only change the cost rate) and 1 HOUR (you can only change the quantity).

Pass Thru checkbox indicates a this expense can be at least partly "Passed-Through" to and reimbursed by Clients. 

Financial Account — to which account to charge expenses.

Description — additional details about the Budget Item.

How to create a Budget

Automatically

1. To create a BP Budget automatically, you should add a Budget Template in the corresponding Scenario card. Once you generate a BP for this Scenario, it will create a Budget based on the template.

Manually

1. Open the Build Plan "Budget" tab in any convenient way:

• In the Status Dashboard, select a BP and switch to the Budget tab.
• Or Open a Build Plan Card and go to the Budget tab as well.

Click on the Open Budget.

Note that the Budget Card is filled out automatically from the template if it exists for the BP's Project.

2. Fill in the opened Budget Card.

3. Add the QTY for Budget Items of "1 HOUR" unit of measurement, and specify the cost rate for Items of "1 EACH" UOM.

Budget Effective date
By default, Budget Effective date is filled by Budget Approved date during approval process.
If it is the first revision of Budget and BP is started, then effective date is equal to the BP started date and filled out during approval process as well.
Users of the "Accountants and Bookkeepers" can manually change the effective date.
The Budget Effective Date affects on WIP calculations.

The percentage of overhead expenses is set up in the Calculation Specification reference.

Whether the Budget approval is required or not, you must still initiate its approval. In the event of approval no required, it will be auto-approved.

Read next about: 

Budget Approval Process

Monitor Build Plan Budget