Budget Categories

A Budget Category represents a budgeted amount for a defined time period, tracked against real spend.

Setting one up

• Amount — the budgeted figure for the period. Optional — a category can exist purely for tracking spend without a budget target.
• Start Date / End Date — the period the budget covers, such as a fiscal year.
• Funding Source — links the category to where the money is coming from.
• Parent category — categories can be nested, so a broad category (like "Facilities Operations") can contain narrower ones (like "HVAC Maintenance").

Scoping what counts toward a category

You can restrict a Budget Category to specific buildings, specific modules, specific transaction types (Work Requests, Work Tasks, Purchase Orders, Invoices, Equipment, Inventory), request types, or equipment types. Only activity matching that scope counts toward the category's actual spend — see How Actual Spend Is Tracked for the full list of sources.

What you can see on a category

• Budgeted Amount — what you set.
• Actual Amount — real spend attributed to this category so far.
• Remaining Balance — budgeted minus actual.
• Available Balance — remaining balance adjusted for anything already committed but not yet spent.
• Status — Active, Upcoming, Expired, or Retired, determined automatically by today's date against the category's start and end dates.

If your organization tracks inflation, some of these figures can also be shown inflation-adjusted.