Budgets

A budget groups expected amounts by revenue or expense account over a fiscal year, split into periods according to the chosen periodicity. It serves as the basis for the Budget vs actual report.

Reading time: ~6 min

When to use this

Use Budgets when you want to plan the year's expenses and revenues and then measure how close you got to the target. You can have:

• A general budget for the whole company.
• Budgets by cost center - one per branch, department or project.
• Multiple budgets for the same year (e.g. a conservative one, an optimistic one) - the system allows several coexisting as long as the name is unique within the fiscal year.

Before you start

• You need the budget:manage permission to create or edit. budget:read to view.
• In the chart of accounts the accounts you are going to budget must exist - only REVENUE (revenue) or EXPENSE (expense) class accounts are accepted. The system rejects other classes.
• If you are going to budget by business unit, have the cost centers created.

Step by step

Create the budget

1. Go to Budgets from the accounting menu.

2. Click New budget. Fill in:

   • Name (required) - unique per fiscal year. E.g. Presupuesto 2026 - Plan A.
   • Fiscal year (required, between 2000 and 2200) - e.g. 2026.
   • Periodicity (required):
     • Monthly - 12 periods, one per month.
     • Quarterly - 4 periods.
     • Annual - 1 single period per account.
   • Cost center (optional) - leave it empty for a company-level budget, or select one to limit the scope.
   • Notes (optional).

3. Click Create. The budget is born in Draft status.

Load the lines

Open the budget you just created. You will see a grid with one row per account and one column per period (12 if monthly, 4 if quarterly, 1 if annual).

1. Click Add account and select a REVENUE or EXPENSE account from the chart of accounts.

2. Enter the budgeted amount in each period. Amounts go in Dominican pesos with two decimals and must be ≥ 0.

3. The actions available per row:

   • Copy row - clones the line for a new account (useful to distribute the same monthly pattern).
   • Delete row - removes the account from the budget.

4. Click Save lines. Mosce ERP calculates the difference from what was there before and applies the additions, edits and removals in a single transaction.

The total per account and the Grand total are calculated automatically at the foot of the grid.

Activate and archive

• Change the status to Active from the budget menu when it is ready to be used - only active budgets appear as an option when generating the Budget vs actual report.
• When you finish the period, archive the budget. Archived ones are read-only.

Expected result

When you save, the lines are persisted with their unique (budget, account, period index). Any future change to the lines replaces the whole set (diff-apply), never duplicating rows.

Once you have the budget in Active status and at least one line, you can go to the Budget vs actual report, select the budget and a date range, and obtain:

• Account by account: budgeted amount, actual amount, absolute and percentage variance.
• Favorability mark: for REVENUE accounts, actual ≥ budget is favorable; for EXPENSE, actual ≤ budget is favorable.
• Grand totals and download options in CSV or PDF.

Common errors

• Only Revenue or Expense type accounts are allowed (accountClassError) - you tried to add an Asset, Liability or Equity account. Replace it with a REVENUE or EXPENSE one.
• The name already exists - a budget with the same name is already created for that fiscal year. Use a different name or edit the existing one.
• This budget is archived and is read-only - an archived budget cannot be modified. Create a new one if you need to adjust.
• The amount must be greater than or equal to zero - negative amounts are not accepted. If you expect negative revenue, use an expense account with a positive amount.

Related

• Budget vs actual - comparative report of the budget against actual values.
• Chart of accounts - create REVENUE and EXPENSE accounts.
• Cost centers - for budgets by business unit.
• Fiscal periods.