How to report on your budgets

How to see the budget position for the whole organisation

Budget vs Actuals

You can use the following reports to see how much you've spent from your budgets and how much remains, so you can check if you're under or over budget.

Budget vs Actuals (Excel report)

Note: This report is available if you subscribe to Sage 200 Services Extra.

Use the Budget vs Actuals Excel report to compare your nominal account budget figures against your actual and committed expenditure, and view figures for selected periods or an annual budget.

  • Select a worksheet to show your budget information by cost centre (fund), department, report category, combined nominal budget, or by nominal account code.
  • Use the slicers to focus on nominal account budgets that you want to see. For example, you can select particular periods in the year, and choose accounts by cost centre (fund) and department, the nominal account type or category, or by analysis code.

Budget v Actuals (standard reports)

You can use the Budget v Actuals reports to compare your budget and actual figures, and see these grouped by cost centre (fund), department, or the type of nominal account.

Nominal budget overview

The Nominal Budget Overview Excel workbook includes budget, actual and committed values for all your nominal accounts.

Information is shown across several worksheets (Report Category, Cost Centre (fund), Department and Combined Budget). You can use all the usual functions of Excel to manipulate the data as required.

Each worksheet has sets of filters so you can easily break down the information in different ways, such as:

  • See the total school budget for all income and expenditure accounts.

  • See how much of their budgets your department heads have spent and what on.

    For example, if you wanted to see how much each department has spent on learning resources, use the By department worksheet and then select the report category for Learning resources from the filters on the left side.

  • Compare one department's budget against another.

    Use the department worksheet and just select the relevant departments from the left side.

  • See what's you've spent on specific categories such as school trips, building expenses or staffing costs.

    Use the Report Category worksheet and select the relevant report categories from the filters on the left side.

  • See how much you've spent of a specific fund.

    For example, if you wanted to see where the family literacy project's funds have been spent, use the Cost Centre worksheet and select the cost centre for that fund from the filters on the left side.

  • Compare spending for a range of funds.

    Use the Cost Centre worksheet and select the funds you want to compare from the filters on the left side.

  • See your total budget for all income and expense accounts.

  • See how much of their budgets your department heads have spent and what on.
  • Compare one department's budget against another.

    Use the department worksheet and just select the relevant departments from the left side.

  • See what's you've spent on specific categories such as office stationery, staffing costs, or company vehicles.

    Use the Report Category worksheet and select the relevant report categories from the filters on the left side.

  • See your income and expenditure per cost centre.

  • Compare spending for a range of cost centres.

    Use the Cost Centre worksheet and select the cost centres you want to compare from the filters on the left side.

How budget holders can see their budgets

Budget holders can see their budgets as a real time summary view where they are the budget owner or as a printed report that you distribute.

For a real time summary view, budget owners can use the My Budget Overview workspace.

As this is a workspace, the budget owner can be a web user. This allows them to access the workspace via a browser. This is more cost effective than having all budget holders as full Sage 200 users.

As long as you've set up a combined nominal budget and set a Budget Owner, a budget holder can see the total actual and committed amount spent for all the nominal accounts that make up their budget. For example, if your budget holders are your Heads of Department, create a combined nominal budget includes all the nominal accounts with the same Dept.

Report on budgets by department

This Budget Statement by Department report shows the budget, actual, committed and difference (Balance) for all nominal accounts with the same department. The report is broken down into sections per department so the report can easily be separated and distributed to different department heads via email. It contains:

  • A summary page per department so department heads can see at a glance spending against their budget.

    This shows the actual and committed values by department for your current financial year only.

  • The budget remaining is shown in red to indicate when you're over budget.
  • A section showing the details of all transactions, both actual and committed, per department, so department heads can see what the budget has been spent on.

    This shows all transactions, actual and committed, entered for each nominal account within the department, using the date range specified on the criteria.

  • It only includes Income and Expense accounts (balance sheet accounts are automatically excluded).

Report on budgets by fund

Report on budgets by cost centre

This Budget Statement by Cost Centre report shows the budget, actual, committed and difference (Balance) for all nominal accounts with the same cost centre (fund). The report is broken down into sections per cost centre so the report can easily be separated and sent to different people. It contains:

  • A summary page per cost centre so you can see at a glance spending against budget.

    This shows the actual and committed values for your current financial year.

  • The budget remaining is shown in red to indicate when you're over budget.
  • A section showing the details of all transactions, both actual and committed, per cost centre, so you can see what the budget has been spent on.

    This shows all transactions, actual and committed, using the date range specified on the criteria.

  • It only includes Income and Expense accounts (balance sheet accounts are automatically excluded).

View period budgets for all accounts

Period Budgets report

Use the Period Budgets report to check the budget figures per period that you have set for your nominal accounts. For example, you might want to compare past, current and future budget figures for a selection of nominal accounts.

Open: Nominal > Reports > Budget Comparisons > Period Budgets.

Other ways to view budgets

Excel reports

Printed reports

Workspaces and enquiries

Questions

How are commitments calculated?

Commitments are the value of items that you've bought but not yet paid for. The Committed POs column shows the value of items ordered from a supplier (via a purchase order) where you've not yet entered the supplier's invoice into Sage 200.

The value is calculated from the quantity per line multiplied by the discounted unit price.

Your commitments include:

  • Lines that have a Live status. This includes lines which have been received (or despatched from returns).
  • Purchase orders that don't require authorisation or have been authorised.
  • Purchase orders that are dated within your current financial year. This includes purchase orders dated in a Future period.

They don't include:

  • Purchase requisitions.
  • Any unauthorised purchase orders.
  • Purchase orders dated outside your financial year.
  • Direct debits and standing orders.

What about direct debits and standing orders?

Direct debits and standing orders are not included as part of your committed costs. However, you can use the Direct debits and Standing Orders Due report (Cash Book > Bank Account reports) to see the value of your outstanding direct debits and standing orders.

Can I customise these reports?

Excel reports

These work exactly the same as any other Excel spreadsheet.

Each Excel report has several worksheets that present the data in a readable format that you can use 'out of the box'. You can make other changes as required. You could:

  • Add your own branding, such as your companyschool logo.
  • Set filters or slicers that you always use.
  • Add information on additional columns.

You can see the data before any sorting and filtering or pivot tables are applied on the Sage_NominalBudgetOverview worksheet.

Don't forget, if you want to keep the changes you've made or create new reports from the default one, save the report with a new name. Once saved you can upload your custom versions as new reports.

See Excel reports.

Printed reports

These reports can be customised using the Sage Report Designer tool. This allows you to add and amend the report. For example, you can:

See Customise reports and layouts with Report Designer.

Workspaces

Workspaces show information in linked lists and sometimes with panels of additional information. You can:

  • Add and hide columns in lists.
  • Create reusable filters.

See How to use workspaces.