Managing Budgets

This article will teach you how to create, manage, and archive budgets in your Awardco platform. Please reference the video below for a high-level overview of budget management.   

Instructional Video

Step by Step + Visual

Log In as an Admin and click on the Budgets tab. Here you'll see a list of all your company's current budgets and who they are assigned to.

Creating a Budget

You can create a new budget by clicking Add Budget in the top right corner.

In this window you can input the details for the new budget. The name is how the budget will be identified in the Budgets tab for Admins and is how it will be displayed to the budget's users on the front end of the platform. The selected cost center must be created before the budget can be assigned to that cost center. Cost centers are used rarely, primarily by large organizations tracking hundreds of budgets across several business groups. To set up cost centers for your organization, contact your Client Success Manager. 

Next, you will need to designate the budget as taxable or non-taxable. This has no impact on the operation of the budget and is for reporting purposes only. Finally, assign an Owner/Manager of the budget. Assigning a user as an Owner/Manager of the budget will not automatically give them access to the budget to use. The assignment of an Owner/Manager will be quite rare. To better understand the Owner/Manager assignment and it's implications, please review the Budget Owner/Manager article. They will need to be added to the budget directly once the budget is created. See below for further instruction on assigning users to the budget. Both Owner/Manager and Cost Center are non-required fields. If you'd like to enable Cost Center to be a required field, please reach out to your Awardco point-of-contact. 

Enter the budget name, assign the cost center (if applicable), select whether or not the budget will be taxable, click OK to create the new budget. 

Your new budget will appear in your list of current budgets.

Once a budget is created, you'll need to determine the balance as well as who will have access to use that budget for monetary recognitions. Groups (determined by hierarchy or metadata) and individuals may be added to the budget.

Adjusting Budget Values

To add or remove funds from a budget, find the budget in the list of your platform budgets and click the circle icon to the far right of the budget and click 'Add/Remove Points.' You may also click on the balance of the budget to quickly access the 'Add/Remove Points' pop-up. 

This will open the 'Add/Remove Points' window where you will be able to adjust the balance of the budget. To add points, enter a number in the Points or Funds fields. If your platform uses a 1:1 ratio for Points to Dollars, the Points and Funds fields will match. The ratio your platform uses is shown directly below the Points and Funds fields. To remove points from the budget, enter a negative number. For example, if you wanted to remove 200 points from the budget, you would enter -200. Click 'Update Balance' once you have entered the value.

You also have the ability to move funds directly from one budget to another. This is done by again, clicking the circle icon to the far right of the budget and clicking, 'Transfer Points Out.'

This will open the 'Transfer Points from [Budget Name]' window. Enter the budget you would like to move the funds to and enter the value you would like to transfer. Click 'Transfer' once you are ready to move the funds. 

NOTE: Changes to budget balances are immediate. There will be no delay in the transfer of funds either from the company account or from one budget to another. 

Assigning Access

Budget access is assigned by entering a User, Group, Metadata, or Role into the Budget Access field. By default, if a Group or Metadata value is assigned to a budget, all role types (Admin, Executive Manager, Group Manager, and Employee) will have access to this budget. If limiting Metadata/Group access to specific roles is desired, add the role name to the budget access parameters. Click into the budget's search field to search for the individual, Group, Metadata and/or role you would like to assign. 

Let's take a look at the Birthday Budget in the screenshot above. The User 'John Adams,' the Group 'Admins,' and the Metadata subset 'Political Party: Federalist,' have all been assigned to the budget, giving them access to use the funds. Let's assign the Group 'Admins' and the Metadata subset 'Location: Massachusetts' to the Honest Bonus budget. To do so, we would click next to the Honest Bonus and enter, 'Admins' in the search. Once we select Admins from the dropdown, they are added to the budget. Let's do the same for Location: Massachusetts. To search metadata, enter the data value, 'Massachusetts.' 

Adjusting Budget Settings

To change the name, cost center, taxability, or the Owner/Manager click on the circle icon and click 'Edit Budget.' This will open the 'Edit Budget' window which has the same fields as the 'Create Budget' window. Enter your desired changes and click save. You also have the ability to archive a budget from this window. Archiving a budget will remove the budget from the system. You may also archive the budget by clicking the circle icon and clicking 'Archive Budget.' This will prompt a confirmation page to appear where you will be asked to confirm your archive request. 

If you archive a budget and wish to reactive it, access the Inactive tab at the top of the budgets page, select the "..." to the right of the budget, and click "Activate Budget." 

 Searching by Budget/Group/User

If you want to search for information for a specific budget, or see which groups or users have access to which budgets, just use the search bar above the list of active budgets. Type in the search criteria and hit enter to perform the search.

Searching for a user's name will show you all of the budgets that user is attached to. Searching for a group will show you all of the budgets that group is attached to. Searching for a budget's name will show you which groups and users are assigned to it.

Importing/Exporting Budgets

For a quick overview of every budget, or to make bulk adjustments, you can now download the list of budgets to a .csv file, make any changes you like, then upload the .csv with all of your changes. To get the .csv file downloaded, click Upload CSV in the top right hand corner of the budget page. Then click on budgets.csv. This will download the budgets .csv to your computer. 

When you open the file be sure to save it with the date you downloaded it. The file will show you a list of your budgets, each budget's monetary balance, which groups have access to each budget, and how many users are assigned to the budget.

Any changes you make to this file can be applied to your budgets when you upload the file.

Note: Do NOT change the Budget ID. This is an auto-generated number that our system uses to differentiate between various budgets that may have the same name across different companies (e.g. service awards, which is a very popular budget name for lots of companies).

You can change the name of each budget simply by typing the new name in the name column.

The balance column will let you change the monetary amount in each budget. When you upload the file, each budget will be reset to whatever value you have put in the cell in the balance column. To add or subtract from the existing balance, type in "+" or "-" before the number in the balance column.

Note: You will need to format the balance column as text cells for the "+" and "-" signs to stay in the cells.

The groups column will let you change the various groups that will have access to each budget. The users column will tell you which users have access to a specific budget.

You can add a new budget to your file which will create a new budget in the system when you upload a new file. Leave the ID cell blank; our system will assign a new ID when the budget is created. When you are certain you have your information correct, click Upload CSV, select your file, and click OK.

Your list of active budgets will then reflect all of the information you entered into the .csv file.

Note: When Importing a .csv budget file, the system will read it as a master list. Any existing budget NOT on your master list will be permanently archived. Always make sure your information is complete and accurate before uploading your file.

If you have any questions, please contact our Awardco Support Team.