Appendix B – Project Budgets

Introduction

This appendix provides a summary of establishing budgets, Activity to Budget Item to COA ChartField Strings relationship, and making budget adjustments.

Project Budgets represent an estimate of the planned or expected costs of the Project for the life of the Project. These may be represented by the total amounts obligated to a Project through multi-year agreements (POs, MOA, Cooperative Agreements, Grant Disbursement Agreements, Standard Two-Party Agreements, etc.)

Project Budgets established within the Project Costing module do not consume Appropriations and may exceed the appropriated amount for any given fiscal year. However, Florida PALM will not allow expenditures to exceed appropriation balances regardless of what is recorded within Project Costing. For this reason, agencies will need to monitor the obligations recorded within PC to ensure they stay aligned to Appropriations. To obligate future costs, PC will allow agencies to record project budgeted amounts within a future Budget Period (Appropriation Year).

Once the project structure is established, users may add the funding source(s) to be used for expenditures for each Project/Activity Combination. Each budgeted line must include, at a minimum, a GL BU, FUND, BUDGET ENTITY, & CATEGORY. Account value is also required but will be defaulted based on the budget item selected. Budget Items use the Budgetary Account Tree to determine what transactional Account values will pass budget check for each item. 

Florida PALM will allow transactions to pass budget check of the Project Ledger successfully whether the COA values on the transaction match the COA values recorded within PC for that budget. For this reason, Agencies should have a business process in place to ensure reconciliation is completed regularly to keep the Projects reconciled. Project Costing provides several online tools, such as the Budget vs. Actual report and Variance report, to easily identify any inconsistencies between transactional data and budgeted date for a project.

Budget Items

The Project Costing Budget Items have been correlated to Tier 2 of the Budgetary Account Tree for all agencies.

Selection of the Budget Item will default the Budgetary Account value used in the Project Budget. The Budget Item allows the use of Applicable Transaction Values in the source module

Budget Adjustments

Since the Project Budget is an estimate of costs, the need for adjusting the budgets is common. To adjust the budget, agencies come into the PC module and make the adjustment reducing or increasing Activities within a project. To move budget between projects the user must have access to the budget details of each project, reducing one and increasing the other project.

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