How Expenses Roll Up into the Proposal Budget
What Total spend, Budgeted, Unbudgeted and Owed mean on the Expenses page, and how a budgeted expense counts toward the actual cost of its proposal line.
A proposal's cost side is the budget the show runs against. Orders and procurement needs feed its actuals, but so does the money that never went through an order: the expenses. This page explains how an expense reaches the budget, and how to read the numbers at the top of the Expenses page.
The Budget Link
An expense is budgeted when its Budget field points at a line item on one of the event's Accepted or Paid proposals. It is unbudgeted when it points at nothing. There is no partly budgeted state: one expense, one line. A receipt that covers two lines is recorded as two expenses.
A budgeted expense adds its total to the actual cost of that line. On the proposal's Budget tab, the line's actual includes an Expenses row alongside the orders and needs assigned to it, so you can see how much of the line went on receipts. When the line's actual goes past its budget, the line is flagged as over budget, and the Budget picker on the Expenses page marks it over.
An expense counts toward the budget once, through its own link. Putting it on a reimbursement order to pay someone back does not add it again through the order.
When the Link Changes
- Proposal un-accepted. An existing link survives. The expense keeps pointing at the line, and the picker shows it as no longer a funded budget line. New links can only be made to Accepted or Paid proposals.
- Line or proposal deleted. Every expense that pointed at it becomes unbudgeted. The expense and its money stay recorded; it no longer has a line to count against.
The Numbers on the Expenses Page
The header of the Expenses page totals every expense on the event, whatever filter the table has:
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Total spend | The sum of every expense's lines |
| Budgeted | The part of Total spend on expenses that point at a budget line |
| Unbudgeted | The part on expenses with no budget line. Reads All spend budgeted when there is none |
| Owed | What is still owed to crew members and collaborators. Reads Nothing owed when there is none |
Budgeted and Unbudgeted always add up to Total spend. Select Unbudgeted to filter the table to unbudgeted expenses, or Owed to filter it to owed ones.
Below the figures, Unbudgeted receipts counts the unbudgeted expenses, Largest unbudgeted names the biggest one, and Budgeted share gives budgeted spend as a percentage of the total.
Why Unbudgeted Spend Is Its Own Number
Most overruns are not one big surprise but many small purchases nobody planned for. Keeping unbudgeted spend as a separate figure, rather than folding it into the total, means the question "what did we spend that was never in the budget?" has an answer during the show, while there is still time to do something about it. If unbudgeted spend keeps landing in the same place, that is a line to add to the next proposal.