Definition of Budgeting Rules

Definition of Budgeting Rules

Purpose

By defining budgeting rules, you can reduce the available budget of budget structure elements, or lock (freeze) the budget for a specific period of time.

This process describes how you can define budgeting rules for budget structure elements with FTE budgets. These budgeting rules reduce the budget provided by FTEs in the overall budget. For this reason, you can only define budgeting rules for FTE budgets (and not for monetary budgets).

Your overall budget contains a budget structure element with a budget of 1 FTE. This budget is to be used to finance the position FI administrator, which is staffed by Ms. Smith. However, Ms. Smith is going to retire on June 30 this year. When Ms. Smith retires, the position she occupied is to become obsolete. Consequently, the budget that financed it can be discontinued. By defining a budgeting rule you can freeze (lock) the budget as of July 1. This will mean that the budget cannot be allocated after this time.

Since only customer-specific budgeting rules are defined in Customizing, you should be aware of the following:

A distinction is drawn between budgeting rules that lock a budget, and budgeting rules that delete a budget.

When a budgeting rule that locks a budget comes into effect, the budget in question cannot be used for as long as the budgeting rule is in effect. If, on the other hand, a budgeting rule that deletes a budget comes into effect, the budget in question can never be made available again. This means that, when the overall budget is carried forward to the new financial year, it will be reduced by this amount.

Budgeting rules that are triggered by an event are referred to as event-driven budgeting rules. You must activate these budgeting rules in the current overall budget.

Budgeting rules for which specific dates are defined are referred to as date-driven budgeting rules. These budgeting rules are valid for the duration of their validity period, and are activated by the system. This means that, during the validity period, the current budget is reduced by the number of FTEs defined in the budgeting rule.

Prerequisites

You must have made the following settings in Customizing for HR Funds and Position Management:

You must have defined budgeting rules in the step Overall Budget ® Budget Element Types ® Define Budgeting Rules.
You must have define the budgeting rules allowed for specific budget structure element types in the step Overall Budget ® Budget Structure Element Types ® Define Budgeting Rules Allowed for Specific BS Element Types.

When the budgeting rule is defined, the status of the overall budget must be Proposed, Released, Released provisionally, or Being revised.

Process Flow

You can define a budgeting rule for a budget structure element whose budget is an FTE budget.

In the system, "defining" a budgeting rule is referred to as "creating" a budgeting rule.

You flag the budgeting rule as an external or internal budgeting rule.

Budgeting rules mentioned in the official documents that accompany budgets are regarded as binding, and are referred to as external budgeting rules in HR Funds and Position Management.

Any budgeting rules that you define during budget execution are referred to as internal budgeting rules.

If required, you can store additional administrative information on budgeting rules.

If you need to, you can change or delete budgeting rules that have been created.

You activate any event-driven budgeting rules when the event in question occurs.

See also:

Defining Budgeting Rules

Activation of Budgeting Rules

Editing of Budgeting Rules