Dimensions Only - This feature is not available in Dimensions Lite

The Budgets window can be reached by clicking on the Budgets icon from two places in Dimensions:

User Budgets cannot be changed if there are any batched orders; you must post or delete all batched orders before you can change these details.

Activating the User Purchasing Budgets window

To activate the purchasing budget window, you must tick the Budget Authorisation option in Purchase Orders Options - Transactions.

There are then two further options available: User Budget Control and Nominal Budget Control, both can be selected.

In the version of the purchasing budget window shown below, both options have been selected and so both parts of the window are active.

Enter for the selected User, or the Users within the selected Security Profile, their:

Also displayed for this User, their:

Whether per Period or per Year is shown depends upon your selection in Purchase Orders Options - Transactions - Budget Authorisation.

If either of the limiting values, Maximum Order Value or Current Budget, are left as zero, the following rules apply:

A zero value in either the Maximum Order Value or the Current Budget fields, means that the field is not subject to a limit or check.

That is, if a Maximum Order Value is zero, but there is a value in the Current Budget, then individual Orders will not be checked, but the total spend for the Period/Year will be.

Or, if a Maximum Order Value is entered, but the Current Budget is zero, then only each individual Order will be checked, and no check occurs for the total spend.

If either of the limiting values are left as zero, we recommend that the option All Orders Require Authorisation Before Processing should be ticked.

Ticking the All Orders Require Authorisation Before Processing option, will ensure that orders entered by a User where budget control values have been left at zero will need to be authorised.

For each User, the amount spent Per Period and Per Year is stored. This enables reporting and comparisons to be made.

The budgets can be revised as many times as is necessary. The system will always shows the budget for the current year and the budget for the previous year.

Only Users who have the appropriate Security Profile can revise budgets.

Clicking the drill button will display a list of the currently established Departments, from which you can make a selection.

You can edit this list to add or remove Departments.

Double click on an entry to select it.

If you change the Department allocated to a User, you will be prompted to select another User to assume responsibility for the outstanding orders held for that User in that Department.

All Orders Require Authorisation Before Processing requires all Orders to be authorised.

Authorise Other User's Orders permits the User to authorise orders and displays further options that enable you to limit the authorisation powers.

In Your Department or All Users.

Limitation can be set to either orders entered by other Users in the same department or to all Users.

By Value If selected, orders will be authorised by Order Value as opposed to by Period or Year Budget.

Important note:

When authorisation is By Value, the authoriser must have a higher Maximum Order Value and a higher Current Budget value set against their User record or Security Profile, than the values set against the Users whose orders they are authorising.

If a User with a budget leaves the Company (or their User record is deleted) when there are orders assigned to that User, a list of the orders will be displayed so that they can be assigned to other Users.

This re-assignment changes the ID field used by the budgets but not the original 'entered by' ID field. This means that the 'entered by' User ID can still be used to select and load the batched orders into the batch processing window but the User ID must be entered manually since it will no longer appear in the User ID list for selection.

Authorise Budget Excesses, if ticked, means that this User can authorise orders that exceed a Nominal Budget. It also displays a further prompt:

Authorise Own Orders, if ticked, enables this User to authorise their own Orders that exceed the Nominal Budget.

Users who have privileges to Authorise Budget Excesses can authorise any orders that exceed the Nominal Budget. They do not require, but would usually have, Authorise Other User's Orders privileges.

When the purchasing budget window is opened from Security Profiles:

Reset will set the budget options for all the Users linked to the selected Security Profile, to match the budget options for that profile.

When the purchasing budget window is opened from the User record:

Reset will set the budget options for the selected User, to match those currently set on the User's Security Profile.

You will be asked to confirm both reset actions.

Print enables you to print out the User Budgets.