Specialty Actions

The following actions exist for a Budget Transaction:

The Load Constraints action, found in the Header tab menu, retrieves all controls (constraints and guidelines) that currently apply to the lines in the budget transaction. Upon retrieval, loaded controls can be viewed for each budget line by using the Set Line Control action, found in the row menu, opens a page that will allow you to adjust control settings to make the severity greater or less than the default setting, and in some cases you can turn on or off the control for the allotment lines of a budget line.

Note: When budget controls are loaded into a budget transaction and not adjusted at the line level, there will be no line level control for those constraints or guidelines. The location where constraints and guidelines were inherited will supply all control information. Upon validation of the budget transaction, there will be warning messages issued for all constraints or guidelines that were not changed so that it is clear to the user that there will be no line level controls for those. You can delete controls from within the transaction to avoid the warnings, but that will not stop the control from applying to the budget line.

Not all expense budget structures are linked to a revenue structure to provide spending authority, but on those that are there is a Choose Revenue Budget Links action, found in the row menu, that will open a page where you can search for revenue budget lines to link. The Link action on that page for selecting revenue lines will link the revenue budget line (s) to your expense budget line.

The Load Links action, found in the row menu, is used when performing maintenance on existing links as it will bring all revenue budget lines linked into the budget transaction for review.

All links created within a transaction instance and from the Load Links action can be viewed by using the Links action found in the row menu. This will open a special page for review.

The Auto Allotment Distribution action is available on the Header and Budget Level tab menus. It is initially hidden, but when made visible the action creates allotment lines using the Allotment Formula ID specified in the budget line. Upon creation, the allotment lines can be verified by using the Allotments action, found in the row menu, which opens a page that will allow you to create/view allotment records.

A tab menu action exists, at those levels below the top-most budget level, to aid with data entry by taking the information entered at a lower level and using it to create lines at the upper level(s). Rollup Lines checks to see if the line it is creating within the transaction already exists at the upper level on the budget inquiry page (not within the transaction). If so, the line is created to modify instead of add.

This action is not intended to work with Actions values of Delete, Deactivate, and Reactivate. Also note that any descriptive field (that is, all fields other than Action, Event Type, Dollar Amount, Increase/Decrease, and COA fields) are not rolled up to higher levels.

If a user makes any changes to the transaction after the rollup, that balancing is very likely not going to be in place any longer. The most common scenario is the entry of more than one line at a lower budget level, followed by a rollup action, and then a change of Chart of Accounts (COA) on one or more of those lower-level budget lines that now exists at the upper level. Changing a COA at a lower level that does not exist at the immediate upper level is harmless.

A few are given below:

Changing COA Example: Entering a BGEX transaction where the BFY, Fund, Department, or Appropriation is changed on a level two line after a rollup. Changing Unit or Object on a level two line does not invoke a problem because changing those two COA does not invalidate any budget line previously created at level one by the rollup action. Changing any one of those first three COA or BFY means that there will be a level 1 line that may not have a level 2 line now, and there is a level 2 line that may not have a level 1 line now. If this budget transaction were submitted without any corrections done, then there would be two parent-to-child combinations that are out of balance. A control like #26 – Parent Current Budget Must Equal Children – would cause the transaction to reject, but that control is not required. A control like #24 - Parent Current Budget Must Equal Or Be Greater Than Children, may or may not catch the out of balance conditions, depending on prior activity.

The changing of the Event Type field is another scenario. Just like changing BFY or COA, the rollup action will not correct this scenario. If the rollup action is taken, there will still be the original parent line created with the old event type and dollar amount, but there would also be a new line with the new event type and dollar amount. A user in this situation would have to know to delete the original parent line(s) just as with the COA change.

Changing Event Type Example: Entering a BGEX transaction to transfer budget from budget line #1 to budget line #2, a user realizes after performing a rollup that the from and to event types were backwards. If that user changes the event types at level 2 only and submits, then there is a transfer from #1 to #2 at level 1 with a transfer from #2 to #1 at level 2. Should the user selects the rollup action again, but fails to delete the original level 1 lines, there will be a net transfer of $0 between lines #1 and #2 at level 1.

Changing Dollar Amount Example: The changing of the Dollar Amount field is another scenario. If the user does not remember to take the rollup action again, then the transaction would not result in out of balance condition. Unlike the COA change, the rollup action would correct the Dollar Amount change.

The application will track certain changes in a budget transaction after a rollup action is taken. That tracking starts over with a subsequent rollup action. A full list of items tracked is as follows:

Changes made to any key fields, COA or BFY, at the budget level that started the rollup action.

Changes made to Event Type at the budget level that started the rollup action.

Changes made to Dollar Amount at the budget level that started the rollup action.

Changes made to Increase/Decrease indication at the budget level that started the rollup action.

Deletion of a budget line from the budget level that started the rollup action.

Addition of a budget line at the budget level that started the rollup action or a level lower the one that started the rollup action.

The Rollup Lines action performs the following when invoked:

Performs a save on the entire budget transaction

Finds if budget lines exist on the transaction for a level greater than level 1

Deletes all budget lines, links, and line level controls above the lowest budget level entered on the transaction

Saves those deletions

Takes the budget line(s) at the lowest budget level and summarizes those lines on key elements that match the definition of the next upper budget level, retaining unique Event Type and Action values. Descriptive fields are not retained.

Inserts and saves the summarized lines created automatically. Repeats steps 5 and 6 with the current summary level for each progressively higher budget levels until level 1 is finished.

For each parent budget line at levels higher than the lowest in the transaction with an Action of New, a lookup is performed to the respective budget level to see if the line already exists or not. If it exists, the Action is set to Modify. If not, the Action is left as New.

Resets all change tracking fields used by the system to prompt a user that changes made since the last rollup may require another rollup.