Budget Support and the Budget Data Model
Overview
Visibility into an organization’s budget during the shopping process is an important part of the eProcurement experience. The BuyerQuest Platform supports the ability for an organization to provide visibility of its budgets at the right time to the right people. It also allows for analytical insights into the budget spend.
Budget Data Model
Budgets in the BuyerQuest platform are based directly on Accounting Values. This structure gives buying organizations the flexibility to define budgets in way that align with their organizational hierarchy. To set up budgets, the organization should identify those Accounting Groups that define the budgets and then provide a corresponding budget to each unique set of Accounting Value combinations.
Example list of budget values
Budget Data Management
BuyerQuest performs a view-only role with respect to Budget data, so it is recommended that clients upload budget data at a frequency that best fits the needs of their organization. The Admin Control Panel provides support for both Full and Delta budget imports to allow for efficient management. While BuyerQuest is not the system of record for budget data, it will track spend throughout the requisition process, updating the budget values to reflect current transactions. This information will then be appropriately merged with any master data imports that are received.
User Interface
Budget user interface elements have been incorporated into the Shopping Cart and Checkout pages to give Users a streamlined view into budget status information that provides actionable intelligence when initiating a Requisition.
The Shopping Cart and Checkout pages display a Budget icon for each line item to give a quick, visual representation of whether an item is in or out of the corresponding budget (upon rollover a hover window displays more detail). This budget is determined by either the default Accounting Combination of the User. When a User changes the Accounting Combination for a given line item, the budget information will update accordingly.
Example Shopping Cart Page