Overview
Dynamics 365 Finance, Budget Control capability provides the means to leverage budget values held in specified budget models to apply preventative or advisory budgetary control on specified costs.
This capability would primarily be used in the preparation, review and workflow approval of purchase requisitions and / or purchase orders, but can also be utilised when processing supplier invoices, travel and expense claims and a range of other transaction types.
Budget Control can be configured with thresholds after which early warning messages of limited available budget can be issued, prior to the point that a budget is fully consumed.
Users belonging to specified user groups can also be provided with the ability to approve and process transactions where a budget has been fully consumed, through the setup of over budget permissions.
In the event that a budget is exceeded, and that the user does not belong to a user group granted over budget permissions, the user can raise a budget request to transfer available budget funds e.g., from another department. Any such budget transfer request would then typically be subject to review and workflow approval.
If budget control is turned on for purchase orders, the budget manager can use the Ledger budgets and forecasts workspace to review the queue for all unconfirmed purchase orders that have budget check warnings and errors. If the budget manager has over-budget permissions configured, he or she can confirm purchase orders directly in the workspace.
Important
Budget Control capabilities are also provided as part of Project Management and Accounting functionality, where budget control on project specific costs is a key business requirement.
Survey and Configuration Dependencies
The completion of the questions within this survey section and the subsequent configuration of Dynamics 365 Finance, Budget Control capabilities is dependent upon the following …
GL Chart of Accounts
A draft chart of accounts i.e. GL Main Accounts (fully coded), Financial Dimensions and Account Structures must have been planned, prepared and be sufficiently mature in terms of definition is essential to financial accounting and budget control activities.
Costs and Dimensions
It is essential that sufficient thought and consideration has been given to the specific costs that your organisation wants to apply spend control to and how those costs can be defined in terms of their related GL main accounts, financial dimensions and main account + financial dimension value combinations.
Financial Dimensions are key to reflecting a businesses organisation model (e.g. business unit, cost centre, department) and providing the ability to model revenue, expense, asset and liability actual and budget values.
Due thought and consideration therefore, needs to be given to how budget control should be applied, not just based on the nature or type of cost, but also how costs should be modelled from an organisation perspective for budget control purposes.
Users and User Groups
Finally, once cost and organisation model profiling has been determined, it is then essential to give due thought and consideration to those users that are going to interact with or be subject to the application of budget control i.e. those users raising and processing transactions that will be subject to budget control and those users with budget management responsibility that maybe responsible for reviewing budget control issues and approving transactions or providing guidance on corrective actions.
Budget Control message levels and over budget permissions are defined and controlled by user groups (a simple grouping of individual users for a specific purpose), so it is important to have established a clear view of user grouping for budget control purposes, together with the permissions that those user groups should have, both generally and optionally, specifically for any individual budget control rule.
Further Reading
Further information on Dynamics 365 Basic Budgeting and Budget Control is available on the Microsoft Docs and Learn Docs sites via the URLs below and should help to provide further background and context to aid survey question completion.
Budget control overview – Finance | Dynamics 365 | Microsoft Docs
Public Sector
Background and information on the Public Sector specific elements of Basic Budgeting and Budget Control are provided via the URLs below for reference purposes.
Set up budgeting and budget control for apportionments (Public sector) | Microsoft Docs
Set up budgeting and budget control for a preliminary budget (Public sector) | Microsoft Docs