Approve a budget and control spending

An approved budget can do more than report: it can check every expense as it is saved. Depending on how you set it up, spending over budget is warned about, blocked, or sent to an approver.

Before you start

• Approving budgets, changing their settings and deciding over-budget requests need the Financial Statements permission.
• Anyone who records expenses sees the warnings and refusals described here.

Steps

Approve the budget

1. When the budget is ready, the author clicks Submit for approval.
2. Someone else opens it and clicks Approve, or Reject with a reason. The person who submitted it can approve it only if The person who submits … may also approve it is ticked under Control & settings.
3. Click Use to control spending. Only one budget per fiscal year can do this; choosing a new one replaces the old.

Choose how spending is controlled (tab Control & settings)

4. When spending goes over budget:
   • Off: the budget is for reporting only.
   • Warn: the expense is saved, and the person is told it is over budget.
   • Block: an over-budget expense can't be saved.
   • Require approval: the expense is held until an approver allows the overspend.
5. Compare spending with: the month of the expense, the year to date (recommended), or the whole year.
6. Allowance over budget (%) lets spending go a little over (e.g. 5 %) before the control applies. Alert when an account reaches (%) notifies budget holders when an account first reaches, say, 80 % of its budget.

When an expense needs approval

7. The person saving the expense is told it needs approval, and approvers get a notification.
8. An approver opens Accounting → Budgets → Over-budget requests and clicks Approve or Reject.
9. Once approved, the person saves the same expense again and it goes through. An approval is used once and expires after 7 days.

Tips

• Only expense accounts that have a budget amount are checked. An account with no budget line is not controlled. Enter 0 to control an account you don't plan to spend on at all.
• Journals are never stopped by the budget, but you are warned when a journal takes an expense account over budget.
• Lowering an expense that is already over budget is always allowed.
• For a department budget, an expense is checked against its own department's budget.
• Lock an approved budget to show it is final. To change an approved or locked budget, click Revise: a new version is made, and when that is approved it replaces the old one and takes over controlling spending.

Common problems

• "Over budget: …" and the expense won't save. The budget is set to Block. Ask a budget holder to revise the budget, or to change the control to Require approval.
• "This is over budget and needs approval". An approver has been asked. Save it again once they approve. Saving again before that doesn't create a second request.
• The Approve button is missing. You submitted it yourself (or asked for the overspend yourself) and self-approval is not allowed for this budget.
• Nothing is being checked. The budget must be approved and marked Use to control spending. Its control must not be Off. The expense date must fall in that budget's fiscal year, and the account must have a budget amount.