Watch this quick overview video
Sales Budgeting for Item Sales is a sub-system of BI4Cloud and it enables an organisation to benchmark actual sales performance against preset budgets or targets.
In this article we describe how to setup the dimensions and details. Click on Sales Budget Reports to see the outcomes using this setup.
Budgets can be set by all of 3 dimensions:
- Who is Selling - detail to SalesRep or one of Employee Custom List 1,2,3
- Who Is Buying - detail to Customer or one of Customer Customer List 1,2,3
- What is Sold - detail to Item or one of Item Custom List 1, 2, 3
Sales Budgets are accessed from the BI Admin Console under Cool Stuff button.
What Detail is right for you ?
Before setting up budgets there are a few things to consider to ensure you have a plan that provides the best outcome. You need to consider what levels of detail you budget to and weigh this up to the effort required in defining the budget. You will then need to map your Sales Budget structure to Sales Budget functionality.
The following diagram shows an example hierarchy of an organisation for the sales people, the customers and the product sold.
You may wish to budget by every Salesperson but you may not want to budget by every possible customer they sell to and every product that gets sold. So you would use a Custom List grouping of the customers and Custom List grouping of items to budget at a higher level and so reduce the number of elements you budget to.
Note
1. Custom Lists - In Bi4Cloud we support the MYOB feature of Custom Lists which provides a mechanism to group detail together (these are implemented in EXO as Group 1, Group 2 and Branch).
2. If you only want to budget at one or two of the above 3 dimensions this is still possible. For any dimension you do not wish to budget at, e.g. Customer Group, simply apply the full budget to just one Customer Group without splitting it.
So if we chose to Budget to Salesperson and then less detailed Customer Group and less detailed Item Group then we would be budgeting to the level indicated by the black elements below.
Please see the attached Sales Budget slide deck for more information on choosing budget levels.
Functional Tour
Sales Budgeting in BI4Cloud is a feature of Cool Stuff.(Enterprise 5 user version).
In this screen you see Cool Stuff on the first line is dimmed. This is because the first entry is a consolidated company and Cool Stuff is not available here. If all Cool Stuff buttons are dimmed then check if you have a valid subscription to use Cool Stuff. Cool Stuff is included in a Cool Stuff Pack - see our pricing page. If you're on a free trial and you'd like to try Cool Stuff then let us know and we will enable it for your Trial.
On the next screen select "Menu" to display the Sales Budget entry forms
The first time you run Sales Budgets from a new browser it will go through an introduction tutorial to help you get started which you can skip if not needed.
The Budget Form fields are as follows
- 1,2,3 allows you to setup the detail of your budget for each budget level
- 4 selects the financial year
- 5 and 6 are used to filter what level 1 values you see (Who Sells )
- 7 is an expand link that shows Level 2 entries
- 8 is the total budget for this line
- 9 and 10 are used to filter what level 2 values you see (Who Buys)
- 11 is a mini-chart that indicates budget is entered and shows relativity
- 12 is a link to access and enter the budget sales amounts
Setup Budget Level Detail
First determine the detail required at each budget level and then edit each level and set the dimension. Screen shot shows setting Level 2 - Who Buys - to Customer Group.
For more help on Setting up and Using Custom Lists - Click here
To see the options available at Level 2 - Who Buys - Click the ">" expand link.
Click the "Budgets" link to view the number of values at Level 3 - What's Bought.
To Enter Budgets
Depending on your volumes there are two options to enter or load in Sales Budgets to BI4Cloud:
- Manually Enter Sales Budgets - see below; or
- Load in Sales Budgets in Bulk
Manually Enter Sales Budgets
- Select the Level 1 (Salesperson)
- Level 2 (Customer Group), then
- "Budgets" link - to enter or edit budget sales amounts
Enter budgets at the Level 3 (Item Group) for each month. When a row is entered use the mouse to select the next row.
Press "Save Changes" and then "Close" when done
Budget entry is now complete, a sparkline chart provides confirmation of entered data. Select "Save and Exit" which will integrate the budgets into the BI4Cloud reports for the selected company.
Setup and Run Sales Budgets Reports
Learn how to setup and run Sales Budget Reports
Suggest you setup the following Pivot report to use to check the Budgets entered above:
- Analyse by - Level 3
- Group by - Level 2
- 2nd Group by - Level 1
- Display - Total Budget
To set up this report from the Advanced Screen
Budget slide deck attached below.