How to fit project and grant budgets into larger annual budgets

Josh Steffen
Josh Steffen
Third Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® General Discussions

We are still new to FENXT as a whole and starting our second budget planning process with it.

I want to be able to track project budget or grant budgets separately and combined as part of larger annual budget scenarios. I see in the budget scenario there is a column for project ID but not grant ID's. Is that how smaller sub budgets such as events and projects or programs are incorporated into larger annual budgets in the reporting. And what if we start a grant budget midway through the year and I need to upload the grant and associated project budget so I can attach it to the grant and project records for tracking and monitoring through the lifespan of the project and grant in GL records.

Hopefully that makes sense. Thanks.

Comments

  • Kevin Brazell
    Kevin Brazell Blackbaud Employee
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Josh Steffen
    grants are dependant on linking 1 of your transaction code categories to your grant records. that's in the grant business rule. After that you can now budget by that 1 t code category, as well as project and accounts.

    But they are all usually beholden to an account. For adding project/ grant budgets, if they begin / end in a single fiscal year, you can add it to your existing budget and track it as normal. Now if they cross fiscal years, then best practice would be to set up a Period Range Budget, to track those. this way the budget can start / end when you need. Example: a grant that starts in 1 year and runs 5 years, the period range budget will let you have 1 continuous budget from beginning to end.

  • Darcie Bien
    Darcie Bien
    Fourth Anniversary Facilitator 1

    I'm in my second year of the budget process. We use Project Codes for most of our conditional grants, though I did add a t-code and am going to experiment with that as well. I'm not sure what the grant t-code will do, but the project code is what we plan to use in our budget vs actual income statements. However, I learned last year that if I run a p&l by account and project “characteristic” the budget lines that do not have project codes assigned (our project code is not required currently) do NOT pull into the p&l. So, for the lines with project codes, budget vs actual is great. For all the others, no budget amount shows. Very frustrating. My work around this year is to assign a project code (0000 - General) to all line items in my budget that do not have a specific Project. I'd like to know how others handle this. Thanks!

  • Angela Tuttle
    Angela Tuttle
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Josh Steffen We do most of our budget by project and then some is account number only. We do not use grants.

  • Siesha Moultrie
    Siesha Moultrie
    Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary Facilitator 1

    @Josh Steffen @Josh Steffen What about Funding Source? When you add a grant don't you need the funding source. The funding source is my way to separate different grant amounts allocated to a particular budget. Tedious but helpful to separate the different amounts by there funding source in budgets.

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