Managing your budget process tasks

The Submit for Review link on each budget page provides access to the Planning Process Management page (for financial budgets) or the Payroll Process Management page (for payroll budgets). These pages provide a view of the current status for all budgets to which you have access within a particular budget file group.

When you click Submit for Review, the budget processing page opens. If you are the current step owner of one or more budgets, you can also complete process tasks from this page. The directory shows the full list of budgets that you have security permission to access in the file group, as well as various columns with information about the process status for each budget.

NOTE: The following screen shot displays the Planning Process Management page, which applies to financial planning budgets. The Payroll Process Management page is nearly identical; all steps outlined below apply to processing both financial and payroll budgets.

To search for a particular budget, you can use the search box at the top right corner of the page. You can also sort on most columns by clicking the column header. Some process columns, such as step owner and due date, do not support sorting.

The directory has three different views that you can choose from the View drop-down list at the top of the page.

  • All: View all the budgets that you have access to in the budget file group.

  • My Current Tasks: View just the budgets where you are the current process task owner.

  • My Requests: View just the budgets where you are the process initiator. Typically, the process initiator is the user who created the budget.

Completing process tasks

Using the icons in the Actions column on the left-hand side of the directory, you can complete the current process task for the budget. The action icons are only available if you are the current step owner for the budget, or if you are an administrator, process owner, or process group owner.

To complete a task, click the appropriate icon next to the budget department:

  • Click the check mark icon to Submit or Approve the budget (depending on the step type). This will move the budget to the next step.

  • Click the X icon to Reject the budget. This will return the budget to a prior step. The reject action is only available for approval steps.

In either case, the Process Action dialog opens, displaying the current step of the budget and the step that it will be moved to. If desired, you can enter a comment into the Comments box. The comment is saved in the process history, and included in any notification to the next step owner.

Example Process Action dialog to complete a process task

When rejecting the budget, in some cases you may have the option to select the step that you want the budget to return to. In this case, the process diagram at the top of the dialog is interactive, so that you can select the target step.

Example Process Action dialog with a user-selected rejection step

Moving budgets to different steps

If you are an administrator or process owner, then you can move budgets to different steps as needed. This is intended as an administrative function to adjust the current step of certain budgets, without needing to restart the process. When a budget is moved to a different step, the currently active step is aborted instead of completed, and the budget becomes active in the target step.

To move one or more budgets to another step:

  1. Select the budget(s) to move. To move only a single budget, click the row for that budget to select it. You can use the SHIFT and CTRL keys to select multiple rows.

  2. Click Move Current Step to move the selected budgets. In the following example, two budgets are selected to be moved:

  3. In the Move Current Step dialog, do the following, and click OK:

    • Use the Select Step drop-down list to select the step to move the budget to.

    • To send notifications to the new step owners for the target step, select the Send notifications to users affected by this current step changecheck box. When this check box is selected, then you can also optionally enter a comment to include in the notification and store with the process. By default, notifications are not sent to new step owners when moving budgets to a different step.

      If you choose to send notifications, the Step Activated notification is sent for the target step. Because the currently active step is aborted instead of completed, the system will not send Step Completed notifications.

    • Click OK to move the budgets to the target step.

Filtering the directory

You can filter the directory to only show budgets that meet certain criteria. Click the Filter icon in the toolbar to open the Filters panel and select values for the filters. When you click Apply, the system uses your selections to filter the directory.

You can filter the directory by various process status properties or step properties. The filters vary based on the Process Filtering Type:

  • By Process Status (default): The view allows filtering based on each budget's overall process status and current step.

  • By Process Step: The view allows filtering based on each budget's status for a particular step. By default, if no step status filter is applied, then the view shows all budgets that have ever been active in the selected step. budgets that have not yet been started or that skipped the step do not show.

  • By Current Owner: The view allows filtering based on each budget's current owner. The view can be further filtered by task status and specific step.