What are budget periods?

Set up budget periods to record budget amounts.

A budget period is a portion of time, usually equal to a calendar month. There are fifteen periods that you can use to enter budget amounts. Use 00/YY to enter the opening balances for the new year, 13/YY to enter adjusting year-end or adjusting entries, and 14/YY to enter audit entries. You can only access 00/YY, 13/YY, or 14/YY as single periods. While periods 01/YY through 12/YY allow you to enter budget amounts for periods in the calendar or fiscal year.

The budget period properties determines if the amounts entered in the budget period are live amounts, adopted amounts, and if the amounts will be used for projections.

In this Topic

What are budget periods?
1. Zero period
1. Monthly periods
1. Period 13
1. Period 14

Zero period

Most municipalities adopt an annual budget. An annual budget uses one amount per line item to be used for the entire fiscal year. This means that the budget amounts are not tied to specific months in the year. Use the Zero period when the budget is not assigned to a specific month, but to the entire fiscal year.

Use the same year the fiscal year begins to create an entry in the Zero period.

Important! Making changes to the budget in the zero period will affect previously printed financial statements.

Examples:

If the fiscal year runs 07/01/2004 - 06/30/2005, use 0/04 as the budget period.
If the fiscal year runs 01/01/2005 - 12/31/2005, use 0/05 as the budget period.
If the fiscal year runs 10/01/2004 - 09/30/2005, use 0/04 as the budget period.

Monthly periods

Use Monthly periods for (1) budgeting on a monthly basis and (2) budget amendments that are adopted during the fiscal year. Monthly budgets require you to assign a budget amount to each monthly period. When these amounts are totaled, the monthly budgets equal the annual budget amount. Use Enter Budget Amount Options and Budget routines to load monthly budgets.

Tip! When mid-year budget amendments are required, use the period in which the budget amendment was adopted to enter a change to the budget. This permits you to track budget changes to a specific date.

Note: Changes made to the budget in the Zero period will affect previously printed financial statements.

Example:

If the budget is reopened and amendments are approved in October (10/05) of the fiscal year, then you would make changes to the budget in 10/05 period.

Period 13

Period 13 stores the annualized budget, a system-generated budget that uses the balance from the current year to estimate the balance at the end of the year. The Annualize Budget Routine is the only routine that uses Period 13. Normally, Period 13 is locked to prevent users from making entries in Period 13.

When do I compute annualized budget?

Use Annualize Budget when you want to project the actual current year amounts to the end of the year. Use Period 13 to project where your budget will be at the end of the year if you continue spending and earning at the current rate. Use other budget routines to copy annualized amounts to other budget periods. The Period 13 amounts may also be included in the budget worksheet and financial statements.

Computing an annualized budget is helpful if your expenditures are distributed evenly throughout the year. For example, Jane is making budget entries in April 2000. She wants to estimate what the budget will be at the end of December 2000. Jane uses the Compute Annualized Budget routine to total all of the expenses to date, and then divide the total expenses to date by the number of months. Jane discovers that the average balance per month is $5000 and the annualized budget is $5000 times 12 months, or $600,000.

Period 14

You can use Period 14 to (1) copy the amounts that are created in Period 13 to Period 14 to enter changes, or (2) to enter your own project budget manually, line item by line item. Remember, this period is the "budget play period," so when the information is ready it must be copied to a different period. The Period 14 amounts may also be included in the budget worksheet and financial statements. Period 14 is used on some state budget reports that call for current year estimates.