Computing Over Budget Transactions

You compute over-budget transactions after entering the transactions but before posting them.

This alerts you to the transactions that have exceeded the budget ceiling. You can then increase the ceilings, change the project/account combinations to different charge points, hold the transactions from being posted, or post them to their original charge point.

You can compute the over-budget transactions as many times as required in a given period. The process evaluates the primary sources of transaction entry: A/P vouchers, travel vouchers, timesheets, journal entries, and requisitions. It does not consider unit transactions, service center allocations, fixed asset entries, or cash receipts. The evaluation is performed only on the direct cost amounts; indirect costs that can be applied to direct costs are not included. In addition, the process ignores transactions that have already been placed On Hold. It cannot evaluate transactions for a given fiscal year, period, or subperiod, because once an obligation exists, it must always be considered. Transactions are considered in their entirety; partial transactions are not evaluated. For example, once a timesheet has been disallowed, the individual line items are not considered.

Over-budget amounts are printed automatically on an exceptions report. You control the order in which transactions are evaluated and printed on the exceptions report. The order is always ascending and begins with the project, then the account. Within each project/account combination, you can evaluate and sort by date, then journal type; or journal type, then date. The journal type can be further evaluated and sorted by each of the four transaction types. Amount is always the last criterion.

The over-budget calculation evaluates only projects that are active. To enhance the processing speed of the program, flag inactive projects as soon as possible. The process does not evaluate projects that have no records on the Manage Project Line Item Budgets screen or the Manage Project Budget Line Item Revisions screen.

The Compute Over Budget Transactions process builds a common encumbrance table called Z_PJPOBT_RPT. Costpoint compares incurred amounts to budget amounts on an inception-to-date basis. The process uses amounts from PSR_PY_SUM and GL_POST_SUM, for prior and current year posted transactions, respectively, and the various unposted transaction edit files such as VCHR_HDR, JE_HDR, TVL_ADV_HDR, TVL_EXP_HDR, CO_EXP_HDR, TS_HDR, and RQ_HDR.

When computing the over-budget transactions, you can designate them as Over Budget. This marks the transactions with a flag in the header subtask of the screen of original entry and prevents them from being posted. In order to post the transactions, you must increase the ceiling or modify the charge point. You can then re-run the compute process to remove the flags on any transactions that are no longer over budget. You can also remove the flag manually.

During the period-close process, any transactions that are still on Over Budget status are moved to the next subperiod that is open for those types of transactions. In other words, if a given Over Budget transaction is an A/P voucher and you are closing period five, the transaction is moved to period six, subperiod one, provided that A/P transactions are open for that subperiod. If that subperiod is not open for A/P vouchers, subperiod two is checked, and so on. You cannot close the fiscal year with any transactions in an Over Budget status. If the period you are closing is the final period of the fiscal year, you must leave the period open until the transactions are posted.

Because of the nature of this feature, we recommend that access to the Encumbrance Tracking screens be limited to as few employees as feasible.