Lesson 5.2: Creating and Managing Budgets
FastFund Online provides a robust budgeting system that allows you to create detailed budgets for every revenue and expense account in your chart of accounts. Because FastFund uses a “bottom-up” approach, you enter budgets at the lowest level (e.g., specific object codes within a cost center), and the system automatically rolls these up to report on the total organization, specific funds, or programs. This lesson covers how to create new budgets, manage revisions, and lock finalized budgets for internal control.
Creating a New Budget
You can create budgets for the current fiscal year, future years, or even multiple years in advance.
1. Navigate to Lists > Accounting > Budgets.
2. Click the New (+) icon.
3. Select Fiscal Year: Choose the year for which you are budgeting.
4. Creation Method:
◦ Manual Entry: If this is your first year in FastFund, you will likely enter data manually or import it.
◦ From Prior Year Budget: If you have existing data, you can select a previous year’s budget as a baseline. You can even apply a Percentage Change (e.g., increase all expenses by 3%) to automatically calculate new figures.
Entering and Distributing Amounts
When you open the Budget Details window, you will see a grid with columns for the Total and for each Month of your fiscal year.
• Auto-Distribution: If you enter an amount in the Total column (e.g., 12,000forRent),FastFundautomaticallydistributesitequallyacrossthetwelvemonths(1,000/month).
• Manual Adjustment: You can override any monthly amount. For example, if your “Gala Revenue” only occurs in December, enter $0 in the Total and type the full amount directly into the December column. The Total column will update to reflect the sum of the months.
Budget Revisions
Nonprofits often need to adjust budgets mid-year due to new grant awards or unexpected expenses. FastFund uses Budget Revisions to handle this without losing your original approved budget.
• Creating a Revision: Inside the Budget Details window, click Add Revision. You can enter a note (e.g., “Q2 Adjustment – New Grant”).
• Effect: The system saves a snapshot of your current budget as “Original” (or the previous revision number) and creates a new, active copy for you to edit.
• Reporting: When running reports, you can choose to compare actuals against the “Original” budget or any specific “Revision.”
Importing Budgets from Actuals
A powerful feature in FastFund is the ability to create a budget based on a prior year’s actual spending. This is done via an export/import workflow:
1. Export Trending Report: Go to Reports > Financial Statements > Trending Report. Select the date range for the prior year and choose the option “Detailed Report (For Budgeting)”. Export this to CSV.
2. Import as Budget: Go back to the Budgets list, click Import Budget, and upload the CSV file you just generated. This populates your new budget with the exact historical data, which you can then adjust.
Locking Budgets
Once a budget is approved by your Board of Directors or grantors, it should be finalized to prevent accidental changes.
• To Lock: On the Budgets list screen, click the Lock icon next to the specific budget year.
• Permissions: Once locked, only a user with Budget Manager permissions (set in User Administration) can unlock or edit it.