1. Process Flow

An overall budget is carried forward in three stages. These might be as follows:

When you start planning your budget for the next financial year, the first thing you do is carry forward the budget hierarchy (stage 1). This means that the budget hierarchy (including its budget structure elements and original budgets) for the next financial year is not available. You can change it (by creating new budget structure elements, for example, or by changing the original budget of budget structure elements).

Toward the end of the financial year, you carry forward the rules used in your budget (stage 2). You do this at the end of the current financial year so that you can carry forward as many rules as possible to the next financial year. Please remember, though, that you can only carry forward rules once for each budget structure element and financial year. If required, you can make changes to the rules in the overall budget for the subsequent financial year.

Once you have finished planning, you change the budget status of the new overall budget to Released or Released provisionally. The budget must have one of these statuses before you can carry forward financing details from the old budget.

You should carry forward the financing details of persons and positions (stage 3) either at the very end of the old financial year or at the start of the new financial year. This will ensure that the financing details in the overall budget for the new financial year are completely up to date.

2. When?

There is no generally applicable optimum time for carrying forward an overall budget. When you carry forward the budget hierarchy will usually depend on when you start planning for the next financial year.

You should normally carry forward the rules in your overall hierarchy one to two months before the start of the new financial year. This will mean that you carry forward as many as possible of the rules in the current financial year to the new financial year, where you can change them as required.

You should carry forward financing details on the last day of the old financial year, or at the very start of the new financial year, to ensure that the financing details for persons and positions are completely up to date.

Always choose the times at which you carry forward carefully! If you carry forward the overall budget too early, this might mean that you will have to enter a lot of data for the new financial year manually. If, on the other hand, you carry forward the overall budget too late, this might mean that you will not have enough time to adjust the overall budget of the new financial year.