Project Budget: Budget Control on Document Entry

The following sections explain how you can control documents that are entered for the project.

Control of Document Consistency for the Project

To ensure that document lines are entered for the appropriate budget lines, the system controls the cost code entry in these documents by doing the following in the Cost Code column of the document entry form for each document line:

• When a user clicks the magnifier icon in this column, in the pop-up window that opens, the system displays only the cost codes that exist in the project budget for the specified combination of the selected project task and the selected account group.
• If a user enters into the column a cost code that does not exist in the project budget for the specified combination of the selected project task and the selected account group, a warning is displayed.

Control of Document Entry

The project budget can be exceeded as users enter documents. The system checks whether an entered document is within the cost budget of the project, taking into consideration the portion of the budget that has already been consumed if Show a Warning is selected in the Budget Control box on the General tab (General Settings section) of the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form. This helps you to control the documents you are creating and can be useful for a person who approves these documents.

When you enter one of the following documents related to a project, you will see a warning if the amount of a document line exceeds the cost budget of the corresponding project budget line (even if the project budget has no corresponding budget line):

• A purchase order of the Normal or Project Drop-Ship type on the Purchase Orders (PO301000) form.

  For a document with the On Hold or Pending Approval status, you can see a warning in the Ext. Cost column on the Details tab for the lines that exceed the project budget. The warning is also shown in the Summary area.

• An AP bill on the Bills and Adjustments (AP301000) form.

  For a bill with the On Hold, Pending Approval, or Balanced status, you can see a warning in the Ext. Cost column on the Details tab for the lines that exceed the project budget. The warning is also shown in the Summary area.

• A change order on the Change Orders (PM308000) form.

  For a change order with the On Hold or Pending Approval status, you can see a warning in the Amount column on the Commitment tab for the lines that exceed the project budget. The warning is also shown in the Summary area.

• A subcontract on the Subcontracts (PO301000) form.

  For a subcontract with the On Hold or Pending Approval status, you can see a warning in the Ext. Cost column on the Details tab for the lines that exceed the project budget. The warning is also shown in the Summary area.

  Note: Subcontracts are available in the system if the Construction feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. For more information about the processing of subcontracts, see Subcontracts: General Information.

The warning message in a document line shows you how much the line amount exceeds the budget. The system compares the document line with the corresponding cost budget line of the project and shows you the following amounts in the warning:

• Available: The amount of the budget that you can consume with the document.

  The available amount is calculated as the difference between the Budgeted amount and the Consumed amount. The budgeted amount is the revised budgeted amount of the budget line. The consumed amount is the amount that has been spent already—that is, the sum of the actual amount and the committed open amount of the budget line.

• Remaining: The amount that exceeds the budget.

  The remaining amount is calculated as the difference between the Available and Document amounts. The document amount is the total amount (the Ext. Cost minus the Discount Amount) of all the lines of the validated document that correspond to the same budget line, including the current one.

For example, suppose that you have budgeted the cost of $400 for the project (the budgeted amount). You have already spent $150 (the consumed amount). When you create for the project an AP bill for the amount of $300 (the document amount), the system will display the following warning:

Budgeted: 400.00, Consumed: 150.00, Available: 250.00, Document: 300.00, Remaining: –50.00

The warning does not prevent you from processing the document but just informs you that the document processing will result in an excess of the budgeted values.