How to use the Budget module

This article introduces the Budget module, part of the Onomi 360 budget suite. It covers what the module does, the roles that touch it, and what to have in place before your first event budget. The guides are mapped below. They cover the setup in Onomi 360, budget capture at request and working the budget during planning, and the reconciliation and closure pass. To plan a rollout for your organization, please contact your SpotMe Account Manager.

Overview

The Budget module runs the financial lifecycle of an event on one record. That record runs from the budget requested with the meeting request to the reconciled numbers at closure. The requester provides a budget band with the request. The approver sees it inside the approval. The planner works the detailed budget during planning. After the event, an assigned finance owner reconciles and closes the numbers.

Costs move through three lifecycle columns: Budgeted, Committed, and Actual. At any point you can read what was planned, what is contracted, and what has actually been spent. Every figure reads per line and rolled up by category.

An amount lands in the column that matches its maturity. A planned estimate lands in Budgeted. An agreed, contracted, or claimed amount lands in Committed. A reconciled final amount lands in Actual. Awarded sourcing bids and routed expense claims follow the same rule, at the points the guides in this series describe.

The budget lives on the same event record as the attendees. So the reconciled costs are ready for per-attendee cost allocation, with no re-keying into a separate tool.

Before you start

• Roles. Budget categories, bands, and policies are configured at the organization level by an organization Admin (see Setting up budgets: categories, bands, and policies).

  Who edits the working budget. Two groups edit an event's working budget. The first is holders of the finance role whose scope covers the event. The second is the planners of the event's workspace, in the workspace Manager or Editor role. Any organization Member who joins or is added to the event's workspace holds those planner writes on that path, whatever their strategic meetings management scope. Organization members work with Editor permissions in the workspaces they access. See Role-based access and visibility for internal and external stakeholders for the containment guidance.

The per-event writes. Those two groups hold these per-event writes on the budget:

• Add cost line, editing a line, and Remove cost line.
• Add sub category, for an event-specific sub category.
• Setting the Cost centre and Intercompany code fields on the budget header.
• Changing the approved band, by selecting another band on the header.
• Setting the Finance owner field.

Writes the finance owner holds alone. Three further writes this article documents belong to the event's finance owner alone, not to those two groups:

• Matching a row in the Unmatched invoices view to a cost line, with Match to cost line.
• Dismissing a row in that view with a recorded reason (see Reconciling the budget in Reconciliation, invoices, and closing the event).
• Clearing a Meal cap exceeded flag, by recording a reason on it.

The two views on the module. The Unmatched invoices view is opened by the holders of that budget's per-event writes. Those holders are the finance role whose scope covers the event and the planners of the event's workspace. On an event with no workspace, the finance role opens it alone. The Claims view lists the cost lines on the event marked Reimbursement claim with their claim status. The same holders open it, while Route for reimbursement on those lines stays with the event's finance owner. The Claims view is documented in How to manage payments, honoraria, and reimbursement on your events.

Roles that open the module read-only. Holding another strategic meetings management role over the event opens the Budget module read-only. An Approver, a Compliance reviewer, a Sourcing grant holder, or a Program lead assignment covering the event reads the budget. None of them edits it by hand.

The write a sourcing award makes. One of those roles reaches the budget through an action rather than through the module. A Sourcing grant holder does not edit the budget by hand. Awarding a bid writes the awarded amount to the Committed column, as a platform write attributed to the award. It writes under the category your organization's hierarchy marks with Sourcing award target. That is Venue for a venue award and Accommodation for a rooms-only room-block award.

An event with no workspace. Some events have no workspace, because your organization mapped their request category to record-only. No planner membership exists for anyone to hold, so the finance role carries those writes alone. Neither grant widens the portfolio-level views. See Role-based access and visibility for internal and external stakeholders for how the two work together.

Reconciliation and closure. The finance role owns reconciliation and closure. It works through the finance owner, who is named on each event record from the moment the record exists (see Assigning the finance owner in Reconciliation, invoices, and closing the event).

Requesters and approvers. Requesters and approvers need no workspace access. They see the requested budget in the meeting request portal and inside the approval.

• Modules. Once the budget suite is enabled for your organization, the Budget module appears on every event record in Onomi 360. The record can come from an approved request, or arrive already approved from your CRM. Until it is enabled, an event cannot be reconciled or closed. Close event, the Finance owner field, and the reconciliation the closure requires all sit on this module's header. Without a recorded closure, the retention periods computed from it never start. For where the suite sits in a rollout, see the phase order in How to plan your Onomi 360 implementation. Please contact your SpotMe Account Manager to enable it.
• Upstream dependencies. The budget enters through the meeting request, so configure the request form and the approval rules first. See Configuring the request form and its categories, and Configuring approval routing, the compliance gate, and auto-approval.

  The band sets are the exception. One part of this module is the exception, because those settings read it. The per-currency budget band sets are defined in Budget bands and currencies in Setting up budgets: categories, bands, and policies. Three settings read them:

  • The request form's Budget band field.
  • Any approval rule carrying a band condition.
  • Auto-approval, whose comparison runs on a band's To value.

  Define the band sets before those settings are configured, even though the rest of the budget suite follows the request form and the approval rules. For where each of these sits in a rollout, see How to plan your Onomi 360 implementation.

  Systems of record. Your ERP and your procurement platform stay the systems of record for accounting and purchasing. The module records their outcomes against the event. It does not replace them.

The guides in this series

The budget guides split the module by task, and each of them assumes the module introduction above.

• Setting up budgets: categories, bands, and policies: the one-time configuration in Onomi 360's Policies area. It covers the category hierarchy and its GL codes, and the per-currency budget bands. It covers the reporting currency and reference rates, the finance codes reinvoicing summaries group by, and the budget policies.
• Budget capture at request and working the budget during planning: the budget band on the meeting request, and events approved upstream in your CRM. It covers the working budget and its approved band, adding cost lines, recording committed costs, and what happens when a policy fires.
• Reconciliation, invoices, and closing the event: assigning the finance owner, and the invoice and final cost pass with the Unmatched invoices view. It covers the meal-cap check, Close event, and the exports carrying the event's financial record.

For what the module does and where its boundaries are, see the Budget release notes.

* Onomi 360 MeetingsEQ exclusive capabilities.