All Funds Budgeting

Funding Packages 

A new tab, Funding Packages, is now available that will contain all new funding requests that have been created by a collaborator or editor. As well, Funding Packages have their own approval chain that is separate from the main budget on the Worksheet tab.

 

A Funding Package is a collection of expenses, revenues, and personnel that are tied together to be approved or denied as one large transaction. This is most commonly seen with new programs with varying costs that will only move forward if approved to be included in the overall budget. To get started, some basic information is required such as a Funding Package name and for which department this request is for. 

 

Once the required information has been filled in, the core information associated with the Funding Package can now be entered. Funding Package level attachments can be associated within the attachments section and these, as the name implies, will be found within the Attachments tab once out of the Funding Package.

 

Expenses and revenues can be searched for across the entire chart of accounts to find the necessary information. The search capabilities will also go across all of the columns present and allow for a combination of search criteria with spaces in between.

 

An itemization under the selected account is automatically added to the Funding Package where the name can be changed for increased clarity. Similar to the Worksheet tab, a quantity and value can be entered to provide revenues and costs associated with the Funding Package. As many revenues and expenses can be added as needed without restrictions.

 

The last section within the Funding Package will only appear if the Personnel Budgeting module from ClearGov has been purchased. This is a direct tie to the personnel data that has been setup for the selected personnel budget as part of the first Funding Package step. All wage information, allocations, benefits, and additional pays will automatically be pulled over into the Funding Package to allow for a simple and straightforward process to include vacancies. 

 

 

All of the same options and default allocation selections also automatically come over into the Funding Package so the department heads and other contributors don’t have to re-enter any information that the Personnel Budgeting team has already put in place. Once saved, this vacancy is added to the overall Funding Package. The same workflow that exists today will still need to be followed to have personnel data display within the operating budget. Once any additional required information for that vacancy is filled in within the Personnel Budgeting module, the vacancy can be included within a scenario, and then imported into the operating budget to see the full budgetary picture.

 

As mentioned earlier, there is an independent approval process for Funding Packages that exists outside of the Worksheet. This will allow Funding Packages to be created and submitted even if there isn’t an open request round for the main budget. 

 

Only editors will be able to approve or deny a Funding Package once submitted. As well, similar to the Worksheet tab, once submitted, the Funding Package will no longer be editable by the contributor while editors can make changes. 

 

Submitted Funding Packages can be “Included” in the Worksheet tab to see what the overall budgetary impacts will be. This will allow editors to see which Funding Packages can be included in this budget year versus what there isn’t space for based on what else has been going on within the operating budget. 

 

Notice the Funding Package column on the Worksheet tab will specify if the Funding Package is pending approval. This will help to clarify which Funding Packages have been approved or which are still pending. Another point to clarify is that multiple itemizations may appear under a single account where some could be Funding Package related and others are not. This combination will sum correctly to an overall account value to provide a total value for consideration.

 

Turning the “Include” toggle off after it’s been on will remove the new itemizations from the Funding Package from the Worksheet tab. However, if a version has been saved with those itemizations included, upon the “Include” toggle being turned off, the in progress values for those itemizations will change to $0.

 

Denying the Funding Package will send it back to the contributor for further edits. At that point the editor will lose edit access until the contributor makes another submission.

 

Approving the Funding Package will close up the new request and not allow any additional edits to take place by any person. However, the “Include” toggle can still be flipped back and forth to see the overall budget impacts. Any additional edits to the specific itemizations can be completed within the Worksheet after approval. 

Progress Bar 

For both editors and contributors, a new progress bar is available in the top right corner of all screens once within an operational budget. This will provide up-to-date information on where a given request round is and how much an individual contributor has changed the budget. These views will be role-specific.

 

For an editor, they will see the broad budget steps and where they are overall with the last step being a finalized budget. Clicking anywhere on this bar will bring up more information specific to that budget. If there is any confusion about what each of the steps means or requires, a link to the ClearGov academy site is available for further detail.

 

For contributors, their progress bar will be specific to them and the actions they, and others have taken if multiple people are assigned to the same account(s). Again, clicking anywhere on this bar will bring up additional information for this specific contributor and request round.

 

If a contributor does not have the submit permission, instead of a submit button within their progress bar, they have the option to say they are “Done” with their portion of the budget. This lines up with the action available on the Worksheet tab and follows the same workflow. 

 

If multiple request rounds are started within a single budget, each of those is represented with its own sections to better keep track of the changes that happened during those individual rounds. Only editors will have access to review previous rounds. Contributors will only see the most recent round information.