Budgets
A budget puts an amount and a period on a cost centre, and keeps a ledger of what has been consumed against it. It is the control the customer's controller actually asked for.
What a budget carries
| Field | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Cost centre | What it applies to |
| Amount | The starting value, in the organization's currency |
| Period | Start and end — a financial year, a quarter, a month |
| Recurrence | Whether a fresh budget opens automatically for the next period |
| Sequence | The order in which budgets are consumed when a cost centre has several |
| Remaining value | What is left. Maintained by the ledger, never typed |
Budgets are monetary only. There is no quantity budget, no "twelve laptops a year". Customers ask for it; the answer is a restriction on the cost centre or a rule on the product, not a budget.
Several budgets on one cost centre
A cost centre can carry more than one budget at a time, and they are consumed in
sequence order: the first is drained, then the second, then the third.
This is how the real cases are modelled: a carried-over remainder as sequence 1 with this year's allocation behind it, so the old money is spent first; a one-off supplement — the €15,000 approved in March for an unplanned repair — as its own budget so it can be reported on separately; a project pot alongside the running budget on the same cost centre.
The last budget in the sequence may go negative. That is deliberate. When budgets are configured as soft limits, an order that overruns has to land somewhere, and a visible overrun on the final budget is far better than a silent failure or a blocked order at the worst moment. A negative remaining value is a report, not a bug — it is exactly the number the customer's controller wants to see in January.
Rollover
A recurring budget opens a new period automatically with its configured amount. The decision to make with the customer is what happens to the remainder:
| Choice | Effect | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Reset | The new period starts at the full amount. The remainder is gone | Consumables, where an underspend should not fund a spree in January |
| Carry over | The remainder opens as an additional budget ahead of the new one in the sequence | Project and investment budgets |
Reset is the safer default and matches how most German controlling departments run Sachkosten. Carry-over is what they use for Investitionen. Ask which one this cost centre is; do not assume from the amount.
Soft limit or hard limit
This is not a property of the budget. It is decided by the approval rule that watches it, and there are three useful settings:
| Behaviour | Rule effect | What the buyer experiences |
|---|---|---|
| Report only | No rule at all | Nothing. Spend is booked and visible; the budget never intervenes |
| Soft limit | pendingOrder | Over budget, the cart becomes a purchase request and somebody signs for the overrun |
| Notify | sendEmail | The order goes through; the cost-centre owner is told |
| Hard limit | prevent | The submit is refused. No request, no order |
prevent rule on a
maintenance cost centre means that at 15:40 on a Friday in November, the person
trying to buy a seal for a leaking machine gets a refusal. Most customers who ask
for a hard limit want a soft one — an overrun that a manager signs for. Ask what
they want to happen to the genuine emergency before you configure prevent.Reserve the hard limit for the cases where an overrun really is forbidden: grant-funded budgets, project accounts with an external funder, capital expenditure that has to stay inside an approved figure.
How consumption works
Four movements, and every one appends a ledger entry rather than editing a total:
| Moment | Movement |
|---|---|
| A purchase request is submitted | reserve — the amount is held |
| The request is fully approved and the order created | confirm — the hold becomes consumption |
| The request is rejected, withdrawn or expires | withdraw — the hold is released |
| An order is placed with no approval needed | commit — consumed in one step |
Held money counts as gone for every other check. Two buyers cannot both spend the
last €500 while a request sits undecided. Manual corrections — the controller
adding €5,000 mid-year — also post an entry, with a reason of manual and the
person who made it. Nothing overwrites the number. See
Reading the budget ledger.
Set one up
- Open the cost centre in the Cost Centers app and add a budget.
- Enter the amount in the organization's currency. Check which currency that is if the customer buys across markets — see Currencies and tax.
- Set the period. Use the customer's financial year, which is not always the calendar year.
- Set recurrence and the rollover choice.
- Leave the sequence alone unless the cost centre already has a budget. If it does, decide explicitly which is drained first.
- Configure the rule that gives it teeth — or deliberately none, if this budget is for reporting.
What to check
- The budget shows its full amount as remaining, and one ledger entry recording that it was opened.
- Submit a test request against the cost centre. Remaining falls immediately. Reject it. Remaining returns to where it was, and the ledger shows both movements.
- Ask the customer's controller to compare the remaining value against their own figure for the same period in the first month, not the twelfth.
Next
- Approval rules — what happens at the limit.
- Reading the budget ledger — how to explain a number.