Budgets

7 articles

Flowtly Budgets provide a framework for financial planning, cost control, and expenditure tracking. They allow organizations to define financial limits for projects, departments, or specific initiatives, enabling monitoring of spending against allocated funds. Utilizing budgets helps identify potential overruns, allocate resources effectively, and maintain financial discipline across operations. This tool supports financial health and data-driven financial decisions.

Key Capabilities

Flowtly Budgets enable organizations to:

  • Define financial limits for specific projects, departments, or initiatives.
  • Track spending against allocated funds.
  • Identify potential financial overruns proactively.
  • Allocate resources based on financial performance.
  • Support data-driven financial decision-making.

Example use cases

  • Project Cost Control: Allocate a specific budget to a project and track all associated expenses, such as labor, materials, and vendor services, to ensure spending remains within financial limits.
  • Departmental Spending Limits: Assign an annual or quarterly budget to a department, like Marketing or IT, to manage its operational expenditures.
  • Campaign Expenditure Tracking: Set a budget for a marketing campaign and monitor ad spend, content creation costs, and promotional activities to ensure financial goals are met.
  • Strategic Initiative Funding: Allocate funds for a new product development or market expansion initiative, tracking all investments against the planned budget.

Connection map

Refers toUses upDerived fromPart ofPlanned vs actual
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
invoice billed to counterparty. invoice taxed by tax-group. cost spends against budget. cost owed to counterparty. bank-transaction reconciled to invoice. bank-connection imports bank-transaction. contract schedules payment-schedule-line. payment-schedule-line invoiced as invoice. contract agreed with counterparty. contract attached to budget. contract orders purchase-order-line. purchase-order-line prices position. purchase-order-line estimated against time-entry. budget raises budget-alert. budget covers project. counterparty defaults to budget. counterparty defaults to project. invoice billed from project. set-off-declaration settles invoice. set-off-declaration declared with counterparty. project linked to budget. tenant-turnover reported by counterparty. tenant-turnover compared per area from contract. utilities-statement calculated for contract. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty.billed totaxed byspends againstowed toreconciled toimportsschedulesinvoiced asagreed withattached toorderspricesestimated againstraisescoversdefaults todefaults tobilled fromsettlesdeclared withlinked toreported bycompared per area fromcalculated forbecomessold toIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent — or, when it went out some other way, recorded as delivered.InvoiceCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyTTax group — The tax treatment applied to a line, so rates are set once rather than per document.Tax groupCCost — Money the organisation owes or has spent, tracked against a budget.CostBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetBBank transaction — A movement on a connected bank account. Matching it to an invoice or a cost is what makes the books agree with the bank.Bank transactionBBank connection — The consented link to one bank that transactions arrive through. It can stop working on its own — a consent expires or is withdrawn — so it reports whether it is still working.Bank connectionCContract — The financial terms of an engagement: a structured set of payment schedule lines, in one direction or the other.ContractPPayment schedule line — One dated amount on a contract, in a direction — money owed to a supplier, or due from a client.Payment schedule lineOOrder line — One line of a purchase order: a role priced by the hour with the hours estimated for it, or a deliverable priced as an outcome. A deliverable carries no hours at all.Order linePPosition — The catalogue of job titles a project role is drawn from.PositionTTime entry — What actually happened — work time logged against a project.Time entryBBudget alert — A notice that a budget has gone off plan - spending over the planned amount, or a margin below the one that was planned. It is raised by a daily check rather than by anyone asking for it.Budget alertPProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectSSet-off declaration — A record that your invoices to one counterparty and its cost documents were settled against each other, in amounts that balance exactly. It lowers what remains due on the invoices; it is not a payment.Set-off declarationTTenant turnover — A tenant's reported sales for one month, entered by staff and used for reporting only. An absent figure means not reported, which is a different statement from a reported zero.Tenant turnoverUUtilities statement — One lease's electricity for one month, the kWh its meters recorded times the tariff in force. A draft until finalised, then it never changes; a correction is a new draft.Utilities statementPProspect — A company you are working but that is not a customer yet. It sits at New, Contacted or Qualified, and everything done to it is logged against it.ProspectDDeal — A sale in progress: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. It cannot exist without a customer, and its stage is never blank.Deal

Related terms