Table of Contents
I. Budget Management Process............................................................................................................. 1
1. Business Strategy ................................................................................................................................ 2
2. Donor Contract/Grant Award ............................................................................................................. 2
3. Registry of Initial Budget .................................................................................................................... 3
II. Analytics Management ..................................................................................................................... 3
1. Programs (T1) ..................................................................................................................................... 4
2. Fundings (T4) ...................................................................................................................................... 4
3. Countries (T3) ..................................................................................................................................... 4
4. Functions (T5) ..................................................................................................................................... 4
III. Budget Prerequisites ....................................................................................................................... 5
1. General System Configurations .......................................................................................................... 5
2. Contacts Module Settings ................................................................................................................... 5
3. Compulsory Financial Module: ........................................................................................................... 5
a. Settings: ................................................................................................................................. 5
b. Analytics: ............................................................................................................................... 5
4. Budget Module Settings: .................................................................................................................... 5
5. Budget Prerequisites:.......................................................................................................................... 5
I. Budget Management Process
Budget management of funds from one/different donors is process, which consists of several key stages:
Planning, Registering, Executing (managing donors’ budget and expenses), Reporting and Final
Reconciliation.
Budget Management is the planning of chronological events throughout the donor contract period, as per
the detailed Budget Work Plan.
Similarly to GMSME, GMS.NET provides its users with the opportunity of a decentralized budget
management, rather than a centralized approach. This serves two objectives: effective budget management
across different parties of interest, however with one central oversight by the Finance Director, as well as
meaningful content management. In addition, the Budget module enables users with a flexible budget
Page 1 of 5
management of donor funds by Program areas, Donor Contracts, Countries/Regions, Corporate Functions
and Expense Categories.
By Budget Management (Budgeting), user are able to register the organization’s budget (for the current
year, for multiple years, or budget rollovers); to make modifications to the budget status-quo; to implement
a budget control on spending; to monitor remaining/available budget and reserved budget; to administer
budget-related analytical codes and to track content and user actions. Thus, in the Budget module, system
users may not only administer their budget planning and/or budgeting, but also manage the organization’s
local analytics: Program, Fundings, Countries, Functions and Projects. These analytical codes serve the
business needs of the local organization and when this entity is part of a network – they are easily
consolidated on the basis of the mapping of local with respective Corporate analytics (as per HO).
The Budget module is designed in such a way as to accommodate any specific donor requirements for
administering budgets, such as special exchange rates and coding to be used, or for reporting purposes.
The Budget module in GMS.NET replicates the same major functions and functionalities, which the
Budgeting module in GMSMe serves. There are refinements of the applied business logic (especially for
Fundings, Budget Rates and FOREX; as well as Projects), and the data fields and classifiers are more, so that
to capture as much information as possible, but these will be described in more details later on in this
document.
Similarly to other GMS.NET modules, the Budget module displays online snapshots of the Budget (ledger D
versus ledger B; Program versus Projects’ Budget), as well as export functionalities (in different formats: PDF,
Excel, CSV, etc).
There are two main documents that influence most the Budget Management: the Business Strategy
narrative document of the organization, as well as the respective donor contract.
1. Business Strategy
As explained in the Budget Planning section, the strategic goals and objectives of an organization to be found
in its Strategy narrative document determine the structure of its Local Program (T1 matrix).
Reference: 08_ Business Logic - BUDGET PLANING
2. Donor Contract/Grant Award
If the organization successfully secures a new donor award and signs a contract with a given donor, then it
must fulfill its contractual obligations and provided donor guidelines, upon which it has agreed with the
donor. We would like to draw your attention to several of the most important issues to keep in mind:




Duration and Calendarization of the budget
Budget Amount, Currency and Exchange Rates Cash Management: a separate bank account or
separate GL; policy on interest and bank charges
Eligible vs. Ineligible Costs; Restricted vs. Unrestricted; Procurement policies
Financial management and Reporting requirements:
Page 2 of 5

o Accounting method: accrual or cash basis of accounting
o Exchange rate fluctuations and FOREX
o Overheads – Administrative Budget
o Fixed Assets (Capital) Purchases
o Employee Timesheets
o Cost-shares; No-cost Extensions
o Frequency and Types of Reporting
o Separate Audit Requirements
Content Management (the program information carried in the budget):
o Detailed Budget Work Plan
o Narrative donor reports
 The planned projects and objectives are accomplished
 Incurred expenses are all eligible (as per donor guidelines)
 Incurred expenses match and do not exceed the approved budget
Please note that Donor Fund Management is a vast topic, which includes not only Budget Management, but
also Cash Management and Donor Accounting, among others. The basic principle however is to observe all
donor requirements and comply with them. For more details, please refer to your GMSMe – Help: Third
Party Funding and Donor Reporting PPP.
3. Registry of Initial Budget
System users may initiate the Budget Management process either from Budget Planning or Budget Program
Management screens in GMS.NET. Usually OSI Foundations plan and submit their Core and Major Third Party
Donors’ budget in the Budget Planning sub-module. After an approval from HO, the Core budget is activated:
moved from planning ledger (D) to real budget ledger (B). As for Third Party Budgets, usually OSI foundations
allocate the Third Party Budget directly on Program level (thus, directly allocating transactions in ledger B).
Previously (in GMSMe), it was easier to register budget in Planning (ledger D) than it was to add budget to
Programs (in ledger B). This is no longer so, as the actual mechanism and workflow to load budget (either in
ledger D or B) is now practically one and the same in GMS.NET.
Page 3 of 5
II. Analytics Management
Similarly to Budget Planning, the Budget module requires several Analytical codes (T-codes) and the local
Chart of Account (CoA) to be first defined in the system; as well as some system prerequisites
(configurations: parameters and corporate settings) to be fulfilled, in order the system users to record a
Budget. The section below will describe briefly the minimum required input before one can actually start
entering budget figures into GMS.NET Budget: Programs Management screen.
There are four different analytical codes defined and used during the Budget Management process, as
follows:
1. Programs (T1)
Local Program codes refer to the organization’s strategic objectives and programmatic areas of work. Since
the codes have to be system readable, they must be structured and hierarchical.
2. Fundings (T4)
The second analytical code introduced in the Budget Planning process is the Funding Item, or what was
previously called “Budget Type” in GMSMe. T4 code is the most important analytics, single-handedly
responsible for full fund accounting by donor contract award.
3. Countries (T3)
The third analytical code used/defined in the Budgeting process is the Country code. This code allows
(actually requires) users to budget not only by programmatic areas and by different donors, but also by
geographical locations (regions, countries or offices), where the funds are expected to be spent.
4. Functions (T5)
The purpose of the Functions (T5) code is to capture both the budget and spending of the entire OSI
Network in terms of several universal categories that the foundations employ to promote open society
values worldwide. Thus, this analytical code, called Categories of Work, is used by HO for information
consolidation and tracking purposes.
Page 4 of 5
III. Budget Prerequisites
1. General System Configurations
Reference: CHEATSHEET - System Configuration
2. Contacts Module Settings
In addition to having a GMS database, we also need users with login details, user rights (Role) and access
(visibility in the system) to operate in the system.
Reference: CHEATSHEET - Contacts
3. Compulsory Financial Module:
a. Settings:
 Financial Journals: ZBINB & ZBUDB
 Financial Periods
 Financial User(s)
 Manage Currencies
Reference: CHEATSHEET - BUDGET PROGRAM
b. Analytics:
 Local Chart of Accounts (CoA)
Reference: CHEATSHEET - BUDGET PLANNING
4. Budget Module Settings:




Initial activated from ledger B  ZBINB
Budget Adjustment from ledger B  ZBUDB
Default Journal for Budget transactions (activated from Ledger D)  ZBIND
Optional HO corporate code for the local program codes  Obligatory
5. Budget Prerequisites:
In addition to the listed above system configurations and settings; local CoAs (Revenue and Expense GL
accounts) and Analytical codes (T1, T4, T3 and T5), the system will also require the following:

Active status of all Analytical Codes (Local T1, T4, T3 & T5) & local CoA


Transactions Allowed (as opposed to denied)
Budget Rates are defined for the respective Funding Item (T4):
o The rate is valid within only one year (Dec 31st 2012 rate cannot be used for Jan 1st 2013)
o There should be at least one Budget rate entered in the first period (Contract Start Date)
o If there are multiple Budget Rates in a single period, for the Calendarization GMS will
take the rate, which is entered with the earliest date. It is recommended that for T4s
with Multiple Rates option selected in Details, users should register one Budget Rate per
period rather than several rates within the same period.
o In case the user needs to use multiple (at least two) Budget Rate(s) within the same
period, the recommendation is to register the first rate , allocate half the budget and
second change this budget rate and allocate the second half of the budget.
Page 5 of 5