Setting variance thresholds

The threshold level determines how much an account can vary from budget before department managers are required to enter comments explaining the variance.

To configure the threshold level, navigate to one of the following:

  • In the Bud AdminBud Admin task pane, in the Financial Reporting section, click Financial Utilities > System Setup, and double-click VCC_Threshold.
  • In the Mgmt AdminMgmt Admin task pane, in the Dimension & Reference Maintenance section, click System Setup, and double-click VCC_Threshold.

NOTE: In the ACCTACCT dimension table, you need to create or include Variance Comments accounts for the Summary selection where ACCT.Type=’Comments’.

General settings

In the top section of the sheet, you may select the following options:

  1. To only view thresholds for particular departments, type criteria in the Custom Filter for Alert Processing cell (e.g., "(Dept.Manager='Chris Sparks' or Dept=101010)").

    IMPORTANT: Do not remove the "Acct.Statement <>'NI'" criteria, otherwise new, approved initiatives will be included.

    IMPORTANT: Custom filters will not be applied to the optional Variance Comments Collection tab in the Month End Reporting dashboard.

  2. In the Comparison Time Series cell, select one of the following options in which to base the variance in the reports:
    • For regular current year budget variances, select CYB.
    • For flexible budget variances, select FLX.
    • For three-month average variances, select 3MthAvg.
    • For prior month variances, select LastMth.
    • For the same month last year variances, select SameMthLY.

  3. In the Revenue & Usage Comparison field, do one of the following:

    • To enable drilling in the statistic section down to CDMCode, select Budget.
    • If unsure which option to select, select Budget.
  4. In the Flag Max Positive Variance as Required cell, do one of the following:
    • To be alerted to variances in a favorable direction as well as variances in an unfavorable direction, select Yes.
    • To not be alerted to variances, select No.
  5. If your organization uses H_JCHours for Paid Hours, do the following:
    • In the Use H_JCHours for Paid Hours filter (Default is H_Hours) cell, select Yes.
    • If you are not sure, select No.

  6. In the Activate Variance Comments Collection tab on Month End Review Dashboard drop-down, select one of the following options:

    • To create a Variance Comment Collections in the Month End Review dashboard where you will manage variance comments, select Yes.
    • To manage variance comments in the Excel Client, especially if you already have customized filters, select No.

Comment level settings

In the Summary portion of the General Threshold Levels section of the page, you may decide whether to collect comments at a summary level or account detail level.

IMPORTANT: Valid account codes are needed if reporting at the Summary level.

This setting is reflected in the Comment Input reports. If you select Summary, a single comment input field displays at the summary level. If you select Detail, individual comment input fields display for each account.

If using the summary level, you need to create a dummy account to accept comment input. You need to add the dummy accounts to the ACCT dimension table, and then indicated in the Summary Account column on the ThresholdLevel sheet.

IMPORTANT: Do not assign any new account to an existing FSSummary category, otherwise the next month that account will show up in detail. Use Summary instead.

You can define exceptions for summary level (and all other Threshold settings by Entity) in the sections further down the worksheet.

Flag alert settings

For each account, you may define ranges at which various flags are set:

For each summary and/or detail account, you may set thresholds that will trigger flags with different color coding in the variance reports.

Color Description
Green Displays on the report if the variance is below the value in the Min Yellow column.
Yellow Displays on the report if the variance exceed the Min Yellow amount but remains below the Red Threshold.
Red Displays on the report if the variance is greater than Max Red but comments are not required.
Red w/Yellow Box Displays in the yellow cell if variance is greater than Max Red and comments are required.