ULTRAMAIN Budgeting is Checking Your Accounts

A lot of what we've been focusing on, when it comes to new v9 developments, has been the development of the various new v9 Products like AHRM and Capital Projects. Well, now we're going to talk about a new product designed to integrate with several other ULTRAMAIN v9 Products- Budgeting. ULTRAMAIN Budgeting is designed to work as a companion to whatever ULTRAMAIN v9 Product you're using, and will allow you to create, adjust, and monitor your budgets like never before. ULTRAMAIN Budgeting relies on a basic workflow: Essentially, your organization's departments provide the figures that make up the initial budget, which is then rounded into shape, reviewed, and approved. The approved budget becomes the original budget, which is monitored as money is spent against it, with adjustments being made as necessary. All adjustments to the budget must go through the approval process. At the moment, the process shown above is only the simple version, but when we list "spending against budget," we mean more than just saying "oh, we spent some money here." Indeed, ULTRAMAIN Budgeting features a robust method of keeping track of where your money is in the expenditure process. Once you've finalized a budget, that money gets broken down as follows:

• Original Budget: This figure never changes; it simply records the amount originally set aside for your budget.
• Current Budget: Like any budget, changes may occur which require adjustments.
• Encumbered: The Encumbered Amount is the estimated amount of expenditures against your budget. This amount comes from the cost of purchased items listed on unapproved purchase orders and anticipated service costs in projects or contracts that have not been finalized or approved. Once purchase orders and contracts are approved and awarded, that money becomes Obligated.
• Obligated: The Obligated Amount is the amount you have committed to pay for purchased items and service contracts. Once the money for these items has been spent through payments made to an invoice or otherwise, ULTRAMAIN moves that money to Expended.
• Expended: The Expended Amount is the purchase order and service contract amounts actually paid. Once service contracts and purchase items are entered into the system, the Obligated Amount decreases by the amount paid.
• Remaining: The Remaining Budget is a subtraction of the Expended Amount from the Current Budget.

As of May 6, ULTRAMAIN Budgeting is undergoing user acceptance testing (UAT) at Knowledge Learning Corporation (KLC) as part of their go-live with Capital Projects. For those of you who get excited about Budgeting- you've got a real treat in store!