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A budget is a tool which allows your practice to set, monitor and then evaluate the statistics for your clients.
To create a budget for a client:
Log into the Time Ledger.
From the menu select Budget.
Click Client's Budget.
In order to see budgets you must have 'can see practice and client budgets' privilege. In order to change budgets you must have set client budget privilege.
The Client Budgets screen displays and the following information needs to be entered.
Client Identifier - enter the client identifier for the client that the budget is to created for. For example, A001.
Financial Year - this is the practice financial year that the budget is to be created for (For example, 2001). Enter the year followed by the tab key on the keyboard. The periods for that financial year will then be displayed (as below);
| 2001/01 | 2001/02 | 2001/03 | 2001/04 | 2001/05 | Total |
The Time Ledger Periods must be open for a budget to be created for this financial year. You will be prompted to create new periods if the required periods have not been created. All new time periods created will be put into a pending state.
To determine the level of analysis of the WIP charge,cost or time budget a row must be added. Each budget can be analyzed at four different levels; job group, job, client job and budgeting without a job. To add a budget row click Add Row.
Client - this will display client for which budget was be created for.
For Job Group - selecting a Job Group will allow jobs of a similar nature to be budgeted.
For Job Type - selecting Job Types will allow any individual job from the IRIS PTP database to be budgeted.
For Job - budget for a job assigned to the client.
Not associated with job/group/type - if you want to budget for the client, but not for a specific job group.
Click OK to save your selection or Cancel to abandon.
This process can be repeated so that more rows are created for each clients' budget. However, analysing a budget with a mixture of job group, job type and individual jobs can lead to misleading and confusing results.
We recommend that there should be one level of analysis for a budget, with job assigned to a client, or Not associated to a job being more commonly used.
This option, selected on the Client Budget screen, will automatically calculate charge WIP, time spent and cost by the ratio set in the budget option. Selecting this option means that only the WIP figure will need to be entered for each clients budget and so cost and time figures will not have to be manually.
A Cost Rate can be calculated as a percentage of WIP to keep the cost figures proportionate to the WIP figures as they are entered. For example, if WIP was budgeted for period 2001/1 for £200, and costs were calculated at 50% of WIP, then the cost figure is automatically calculated for £100.
The Budgeted time figures can be calculated automatically from the WIP figure, calculated as a Rate per hour. For example, if WIP was budgeted for £100 for 2000/1 and the rate per hour was £100, then the time figure will automatically be calculated as 1 hour.
Selecting this option will override the Keep cost figures for existing budgets, and Keep figures for actual time for existing budgets proportionate to WIP figures on the Budget options screen
Each client can have a WIP charge budget, a cost budget and a Time Budget. The WIP charge budget is automatically highlighted but the cost and time budgets are optional.
Click here to enable or remove the time or cost budgets as determined in the budget options screen.
Before creating a client budget ensure:
A client Identifier has been entered
The Practice financial year has been entered
The required rows have been created
There are three ways of entering budget information for each client.
The following details
1. Enter the figures manually
Entering WIP Charge Budget, cost Budget and Time Budget manually involves entering each budget figures on a period by period basis for each client. This means that specific budget figures can be entered for each client offering flexibility
2. Using a Ratio
The WIP Charge Budget can be kept in step, by means of ratio, with WIP Cost Budget and WIP Time Budget This ratio is set and activated in the budget option screen, and with the Keeping WIP/costs/time in step option Using this method reduces data entry time as neither the WIP Costs or the WIP Time budgets will need to be entered.
3. Enter the Budgets based on previous year
Once a budget has been created using the clients budget screen the set budgets based on prior year facility can be used. This process creates budgets for all clients in one go, based upon the clients' prior years figures, as a time saving exercise.
Click Save to retain the changes made to the budget, or Cancel .to close. If Save is not selected all changes will be lost.
Budget reference
Budget Options
Creating multiple budgets
Printing budgets