By the end of this lesson, you will be able to approve project budgets using Budgeting & Planning’s budget tool.
In order for Budgeting & Planning’s project budgeting process to work efficiently, the program needs to know who in your company can originate and modify project budgets and who has responsibility for approving these budgets. The database includes all project manager assignments that have been recorded in your accounting system, up and down the entire project structure, wherever assignments have been made. The application also assigns the highest level project manager as the approver of all budgets, whether the budgets are created at the lowest or some rollup level. For multi-level projects, all managers assigned to roll-up levels are budget originators, but not approvers.
Approval authority has to be created in the database because it does not exist in the accounting system. When you determine the appropriate management authority structure, it will underlie the budget creation and workflow process.
Approval is necessary to establish a frozen budget, (a requirement of the Estimate-at-Complete process), and critical to fulfilling Earned Value Management (EVM) requirements, if they exist.
Budgeting & Planning encourages the alignment of project management authority structures with the budgeting and performance reporting processes so that an accountability process can be established. Then, when performance issues arise, corrective action can be taken.