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Budget Keys

Budget Keys are one of the tools available in FirstOffice to help you calculate budgets. Budget Keys allow you to apply a formula to a yearly budget total in order to divide it into monthly figures.

For example, suppose that for a particular Account each month of the year is budgeted to have the same balance, except June, July and August, which are to have balances half the size of the other months. Enter a Budget Key value of 1 for each of the three summer months, and 2 for the other months. The sum will be 21, which then corresponds to the annual balance.

When the sum of the Budget Keys is 100, each month will have a certain percentage of the annual figure. You can use percentage values as Budget Keys, but you don't have to. And remember that in case you start entering percentage values that add up to 100, changing a value will also change the sum away from 100.

You should define your Budget Key records to co-ordinate with your budgeting methods. For example, if you start with an annual budget figure and break it down into quarterly totals, your Budget Keys should feature four lines, one for each quarter. If you work to monthly totals, each Budget Key should have twelve lines, and so on.

Please refer to the description of the Budget register to see how you can use Budget Keys to help calculate Budgets.

To enter Budget Keys, double-click 'Budget Keys' in the 'Settings' list. Then, open the 'Budget Key: New' window by clicking the [New] button. When the Budget Key record has been entered, save it using the [Save] button and close the window by clicking the close box. Then, close the browse window using the close box again.

Code
This is a code that identifies the Budget Key, when used for budgeting. You can only use numbers and uppercase letters.

Name
Give the key a descriptive name, e.g. "SALES." The name is shown in the "Budget Keys: Browse" window. Ideally, the Name should include a reminder of the number of periods (i.e. the number of rows used in the grid, usually 12 for monthly periods or four for quarterly periods) because Budget records should have the same number of periods as the Budget Keys they use.

Sum
FirstOffice will fill in this field automatically with the sum of the monthly or quarterly key values.

Value
Enter the monthly or quarterly key values.