Managing a supply chain without any budget plans can bring disastrous results to the business. Therefore, it is necessary for the manufacturers and other companies to set the priorities straight by defining the goals of their budget. To achieve your goals for budget, you need to monitor resources, track every expense and define the limits to your purchases too. Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply chain budgeting and planning can be your ultimate tool to automate the budget planning process and avoid any errors.
What is Budget Planning in D365?
Budget control is essential in any organization to keep track of the funds available for planned and actual purchases and expenditures. It allows you to meticulously plan, measure, manage and forecast financial resources throughout the fiscal year, as well as limit out-of-budget spending.
1. Define budget dimensions
Budget dimensions can be easily set at a high level – like the main account budget, or at a lower level, like account, business, or department.
Depending on the business requirements, budgets are also manageable at the same level of detail as your actual data or a simpler level.
2. Define budget plan layout
You can define the layouts as per the need. For example, as shown in the screenshots You can see the previous year’s actuals or the current forecast’s YTD result.
3. Budget entries can be entered directly into Dynamics 365 or from the Excel worksheet
After clicking the ‘publish’ button, any budget entries made in Excel will automatically sync into Dynamics 365.
4. Copy LY and YTD data into a budget plan.
The ‘generate budget plan from general ledger’ function in Dynamics 365 now makes it simple to copy GL actual data into a budget plan. You can copy actual data into a budget plan in a variety of formats, including last year, the year before last year, or as a sum into a single reference column.
Actual data from each month can be copied into a forecast to create a rolling budget plan.
5. Copy between budget plans.
You can also copy data from one budget plan to another. This is particularly helpful when forecasting is dependent on a previous budget plan.
The function ‘generate budget plan from budget plan’ allows you to copy monthly/yearly data from one plan to another.
6. Budget allocation
The budget allocation function is to generate a baseline based on the previous year’s actuals if users need one.
Users can set up a percent allocation schedule like this if last year’s actuals need to be populated into this year’s budget as a starting point, but with a seasonal variance percent:
It’s worth noting that you can make as many allocation schedules as you want and use different allocation methods for different lines.
Users will be able to establish a baseline before beginning to enter the budget.
7. Budget workflows
Budget planning workflows are available right out of the box in Dynamics 365. This can be determined by the users or cost centers for which they are accountable. The budget will be submitted to the responsible managers for approval, depending on who is preparing it.
8. Budget Register Entries
The ‘generate budget register entries’ function helps you in converting a budget plan into budget register entries after it is complete.
After converting a budget plan into budget register entries and confirming them, you can report them in the financial report module for reports like actual versus budget.
9. Budget Plan Reporting
If users want to see budget reports in financial report format before they are approved or finalized in the budget register entries, they can use Power BI.
Power BI provides budget and actual data insights that users can slice and dice to meet their specific requirements.
Bottom line
Budget control helps organizations ensure spending limits are adequate and under control, as excessive spending can hurt corporate profits. This is when Microsoft Dynamics 365 can assist you in a more effective manner for managing supply chain budgeting and planning. If you believe you require professional assistance with more advanced budgeting techniques in D365, DHRP has some good news for you. Please contact us and allow us to assist you. We can elaborate the process of Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain and how it can be beneficial in supply chain planning and budgeting process for a budget manager to set the financial goals.
