An approval process for budgets can be managed in the system

Description

Managing an approval process for budgets within budgeting software involves setting up a structured workflow for review, adjustment, and approval of budgets. In businesses, the budget approval process can be complex, involving multiple departments and hierarchical levels. An efficient budget software system should effectively automate, streamline and control this process across the organization.

Example Use Case

Scenario: An enterprise organization has multiple departments, each with its unique budgeting requirements, which are all consolidated into the overall organizational budget. The company's budget needs to be reviewed by various departmental heads, financial controllers, and the CFO before final approval.

Solution: With the budgeting software, the finance department creates the initial budget and then submits it for approval within the system. The system notifies the relevant departments or personnel to review, adjust if necessary, and approve or reject the budget. All these activities are logged within the system, maintaining a clear audit trail and reducing the potential for errors or mismanagement.

Considerations

Approvals in budgeting can mean many things:

• Approving a single line item in the budget, like a capital expense or an employee hire
• Looking over an entire department budget and approving that
• Someone higher up in the organization approving an entire, consolidated budget
• An approval chain where a department budget is submitted, approved by a manager, then approved by a VP, then approved by the CFO

The more approvals you use, the longer it will take to complete the budget. We recommend only using approval processes for portions of the budget or forecast that have a material impact on the business.

Make sure the approval process you need is supported by the vendor. Do not assume that, just because the approval functionality appears robust, that it will support your specific use case.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Flow Control: How does your system manage the flow of budget approval between different levels of authority in the business?
• Audit Trails: How comprehensive are the audit trails for the various approvals?
• Granularity: How detailed can approvals be? Can we setup transaction-level approvals, or is it only on the summary values?
• Visualization: Is there a way to view the approval flow visually, including approval statuses?