Last updated: September 21, 2022

Deciding on how to build your budget is usually a cumbersome task. With the Sage Intacct integration from SIP, however, setting up your budget became a lot easier. The option to Use my Sage Intacct data to build your budget:

💡 Before you begin integrating with Sage Intacct, see how to Integrate with Sage Intacct to get details on how to configure the integration, the required user permissions, and what data is shared.

When you work with statistical data, keep in mind that you should create a new budget in SIP using the integration with Intacct. Currently, statistical accounts can't be created from scratch in existing budgets using one integrated process.

1. Select + New budget from the main menu. The Create a new budget wizard is displayed.

2. Select Use my Sage Intacct data and click Next.

3. Enter your Company ID, User ID, and Password that you created after signing up in Sage Intacct. Click Next.

4. If your Sage Intacct company has multiple entities, you can choose to build a budget for all of the entities, or select a single entity from the dropdown and build a budget for the selected entity. Click Next.

5. Add basic information about your new budget:

📝 If you are working with multi-entity companies and, in the previous step selected to create a budget for a single entity, the name of the entity appears automatically in the Budget name field.

From the Import dimensions list, select the dimensions you want to import from Intacct to use in your budget. If you are working with multi-entity companies, the Location dimension is required and is automatically selected.

💡 The list displays all the dimensions in your company, including those that are user-defined. In certain scenarios adding unneeded multiple dimensions can add to the budget calculation times. The limit is up to 2000 dimension values per dimension. If you surpass this limit, the options for selection are grayed out.

Next to each dimension you select, a list of all the available dimension values is displayed. You can either import the entire list or select specific values that you need for your budget. The Intacct ID appears in parenthesis next to each dimension value. An indicator next to the dimension name shows the number of dimension values you’ve selected from the number of available values.

To manage your headcount and salary budget, add all of the active employee details; such as names, roles, IDs, dimensions, employee start and end dates, and salaries. Based on your employee plan, you can build other budget lines and financial models, like travel costs, equipment purchases, or sales commissions.

📝 Note the following:

From the Import employees window, select whether or not to import your employee record data and click Next. If the employee data in Intacct is inaccurate or incomplete, you can skip this step and import your employee data from MS Excel, or enter it manually at a later time.

📝 You may be prompted to map your accounts if they don’t have account types (Expense, Revenue, Cost of Revenue, Other) currently assigned in Intacct, or if the accounts have missing types. In this case, the Map your accounts window appears as step 5 of the wizard, and the following steps appear consecutively. If this window is not displayed, Merge your accounts will be step 5, instead.

1. From the Map your accounts window, review your accounts and modify the account type, if necessary, or leave the mapping as it appears and click Next.

The account type is automatically assigned in SIP based on the account name recognition, but these may not always be accurate, so be sure to review.

2. From the Merge your accounts window, you can lump your accounts into a new or existing budget line. For example, if you have multiple accounts for travel, you may want to merge them into one budget line called Travel. Simply select the accounts you want to merge, type in the name for the new budget line or select an existing budget line, and click Apply. When you're finished, click Next.

💡 Keep in mind that if you export your budget back to Intacct, the merged accounts appear as separate budget lines and the budget amount is divided equally between all the accounts assigned to the budget line. 

Move on to set up your budget structure hierarchy. Displayed to the left side of the window are all of the dimensions (parent) and sub-dimensions (child) available in Intacct to use in your budget structure. If there are multiple sub-dimensions, the sub-dimensions appear as Dimension > Sub-dimension > Sub-dimension 2.

As you hover on the information tooltip, a popup displays the list of available dimension values for the dimensions and sub-dimensions you select.

To the right side of the window, a preview of your budget structure is displayed and adjusts as you drag and drop dimensions. Easily drag a dimension and drop it under the desired budget line group in your budget structure. Additionally, you may want to drop a dimension under the top level to create your entire budget structure by a specific dimension, for example, by Locations.

You can add up to four dimensions in a hierarchical fashion per budget group (Revenues, Cost of Revenue, Operating Expenses, or Other), or up to four dimensions at the top level. Alternatively, you can add a combination of dimensions at the top level and per budget group.

📝 Once a dimension is assigned at the top level, the same dimension can’t be used twice and can no longer be used in a budget group hierarchy. For example, you can’t build your company budget by Location, and then build your budget groups within the company by Location again. You can, however, use the Sub-location dimension in the budget group level, if one exists.

The number of budget lines is displayed for each budget group (Revenues, Cost of Revenues, Operating Expenses, or Other) and the total amount in your budget is displayed at the bottom. The maximum recommended budget size is approximately 3000 budget lines. Larger budgets may cause performance issues.

💡 When you plan your budget structure in SIP, it is best practice to create a budget that reflects your company's management structure, or the budget ownership structure, and aligns with the actuals or budget data from Intacct. If your company manages its Revenues by Department, and each department manager needs to see the revenues for their department, the best approach is to group your revenues by department, which later allows you to easily share the data with the relevant manager. If, however, you group your Revenues by Department, but the revenue data in Intacct is only by Location, this will result in blank budget lines.

Click Next when you’re done.

Select Yes if you’d like to import your statistical records.

From the Select your statistical accounts step, select which statistical accounts you want to use in your budget, or click the Statistical Account checkbox to select them all.

📝 Accounts not selected for use in your budget are imported with No mapping and appear in the Statistical tab of the Actuals > Mapping table.

Click Next to move on to the next step.

Use this step to match the dimensions in your budget to the statistical accounts you selected to import.

Dimension mapping lets you set up the structural hierarchy of the statistical accounts you selected for your budget. When you map dimensions to the selected statistical accounts, the statistical accounts are broken down into sections and created under each dimension value to which they’re mapped. The sections consist of model groups (not mandatory), models, and model lines. See Models and statistical model groups for more details.

Similar to setting up your budget structure hierarchy, once a dimension is assigned at the top level, the same dimension can’t be used twice and can no longer be used as a sub-dimension in the statistical account group hierarchy.

1. Select Yes to populate your budget with data from actuals, existing budgets from Intacct, statistical accounts (if you chose to add them), or all of the aforementioned choices. All of the selected accounts are added to their relevant account tabs in the Actuals > Mapping > Accounts table.

2. From the next window, select the data to populate your budget and the fiscal year from which you want to import data. Then simply slide the divider left or right to select from which months you want to import actuals and from which to import budget data.

📝If you previously chose to import employee record data, the salary and wages accounts won't be populated with actuals and/or budget data. Instead, it will be with the employee data that appears in Intacct.

3. Data can be populated from any reporting book that exists in Intacct. The Reporting book field automatically displays the default reporting book used by your company. If you prefer to populate data from a different reporting book, you can overwrite this value, or choose No book and select an additional reporting book (or books) from the Additional books dropdown.

4. If you choose to populate your budget based on budgets from Intacct, select the Budget version from the dropdown and click Next.

5. Set the year-over-year (YoY) percentage change (increase or decrease) of your actuals or budget amounts to populate your budget.

From the Modify your budget structure window, you can modify your budget tree and statistical accounts structure by switching between the Budget lines and Statistical accounts (models) previews. Modify your budget tree or statistical accounts structure by removing any unnecessary lines or lines without past actuals. The Total number includes both budget and statistical model lines that appear based on the reporting type of the account. You can use these totals to help you decide whether or not you want, or need, to remove these lines.

In addition, the hierarchical data you selected to populate your budget is shown, and you can choose to expand or collapse this view. The statistical account list preview is displayed as:

Budget levels, statistical account groups, or lines that have no past actuals are removed automatically. Selected by default, the option to Remove all lines without past actuals displays the total number of budget lines with no past actuals. If the lines don't have actuals data for the most recent 12-month period before the start of the budget, then they are removed from your budget or statistical account structure and appear crossed out. Automatically removing budget lines with no past actuals does not influence your ability to manually select additional lines to remove.

For example, let's say you've grouped your expenses by department and you have an account for commissions. There may be departments that don't work with commissions and the past actuals, therefore, have a zero amount. In this case, the budget line is unnecessary and can be removed from your budget structure. If you change your mind, simply revert your selection.

All relevant transactions are automatically added to the Past actuals dropdown filter of the appropriate transaction types in the Actuals > Details tab.

To view the list of transactions with data that won't be included in your budget, click Download the list. The downloaded Excel file displays the data from Intacct based on the data you chose to populate your budget, but that did not match your budget and dimensional hierarchy. For instance, if you created your budget for a single entity rather than for all of the entities in your company, the displayed data is relevant only for the selected entity.

The Source column represents whether the data or statistical accounts from Intacct are retrieved from the budget amount data, actuals amount data, or statistical data for the reporting period.

In addition, click read why this is happening for more information on importing data to parent budget groups of your budget hierarchy when you create a budget using data from Intacct.

Click Finish to continue. Your budget is now ready (with confetti and all) and you can start working!

Other than the budget type, you can modify your budget structure at any time from the Sage Intacct Planning (SIP) application. You can add or delete budget lines, create groups of budget lines, and so on.

📝 Extensive changes to the budget structure, however, do require that you manually update the account mapping from Sage Intacct to SIP. This can be done from the Actuals > Mapping > Accounts table. Once you have finished setting up your budget structure, you can now begin entering your budget data.

Once you have finished setting up your budget structure, you can now begin entering your budget data.