Budget Tree: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you can define a budget structure that will be used by all companies and branches. To do so, you configure a budget tree, in which budget articles are divided into groups.

Tip: We recommend that you define a budget tree because it makes easier to prepare and analyze budgets. However, you can work with simple budgets, which are lists of budget articles, without the configuration of the budget tree first being performed. For details, see Preparing a Simple Budget.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn about the following:

  • The elements of a budget tree structure
  • The ways the budget tree can be configured

Applicable Scenarios

You create a budget tree if hierarchical (multilevel) budgets are used by your organization to facilitate the preparation of the budget.

Configuration of a Budget Tree

Before you start configuring budgets, you should consider the needs of all companies and branches defined in the tenant so that you can include all the budget levels used by your companies and branches, because the same tree will be used for all companies, branches, and budget versions.

To define the structure of the budgets that are used in the system, you build a budget tree on the Budget Configuration (GL205000) form. To do so, you add budget articles that are represented as nodes and leaves in the system.

Node articles group similar leaf articles. For example, you can create one node for the account–subaccount pairs for salaries and another node for the account–subaccount pairs that are used to record sales.

Each leaf article is defined by an account–subaccount pair. The account and subaccount of the leaf are the ones to which the budget amount is recorded in the system. The system calculates the amount for each node automatically as the sum of the amounts of all its leaf articles.

Important: An account–subaccount pair can be used only once within a tree.

The budget tree will be preloaded when you start creating a budget on the Budgets (GL302010) form. You can modify the preloaded structure for each particular budget.

Node Budget Articles

You define nodes on the Subarticles pane of the Budget Configuration (GL205000) form. For each node, you enter a description; you can also specify account or subaccount masks (or both types of masks). The check box in the Node column has to be selected for each node you create in the system.

The account and subaccount masks specified for the node in the Account Mask and Subaccount Mask columns define the articles that can be added to this node. When you create a budget on the Budgets (GL302010) form, you can preload articles to this node based on the mask, so that you do not have to define a leaf for every single article in the budget tree.

You can further populate nodes with other nodes, or define leaf articles for each node.

Leaf Budget Articles

You add each leaf (account–subaccount pair) to the budget tree on the Subarticles pane of the Budget Configuration (GL205000) form. You can do this in one of the following ways:

  • To add a range of similar accounts and subaccounts, you click Preload Accounts on the table toolbar of the Subarticles pane. You then specify a range of accounts and a mask for subaccounts in the Preload Accounts dialog box. After you click OK in the dialog box, the system generates all possible account–subaccount pairs.
  • To enter each account–subaccount pair manually, on the Subarticles pane, you click Add Row on the table toolbar and specify an account–subaccount pair.

For leaves, you can specify account and subaccount masks in the Account Mask and Subaccount Mask columns. The account mask and the subaccount mask define the account–subaccount pair or pairs included in the budget article. For example, you might want to aggregate small amounts of different accounts under just one account in the budget. To do so, you specify the account mask and subaccount mask of the group in the leaf.