How to add a budget or forecast

Consolidated companies have the choice of budgeting at consolidated or subsidiary level.

See How to add a budget to a consolidated company

How to add and view your budgets in ScaleXP

To view and manage the budgets held in ScaleXP, go to Load Data (top bar)>Budgets & Forecasts (left sidebar).

Here you will see existing budgets and have the option to edit them or add new ones.

Budgets from your accounting system - financials only

  • Budgets from your accounting system update automatically.
  • If you are missing budgets from your accounting system, you may need to adjust your settings.  To do this, go to Load Data (top bar)> Connections (left sidebar)>three dots in accounting system box (next to Sync now)>Configure>Budgets & Forecasts. Change the drop down menu from "Do not import budgets & forecasts" to desired budget starting date.   Sync data to see the new forecasts.

Budgets uploaded directly to ScaleXP - metrics as well as financials

  • To upload  budgets or forecasts directly to ScaleXP, go to Load Data (top bar)>Budgets & Forecasts (left sidebar)>Load New Budget (right side, across from Manually Loaded Budgets & Forecasts).   See screenshot below.
  • This will walk you through the process to download a template and upload your budgets into ScaleXP, as detailed below:
    •  Get Started > Select the category or categories to include (tick box at right of category) >deselect anything you don't want to include (tick box at left of category or metric name).   
  • Enter data here for any financials, data sets or metrics in ScaleXP as follows:
    •  financial data from your accounting system, either the Profit and Loss or Balance sheet -- your template will include all accounts as grouped in ScaleXP
      • enter at account level to set your budget
      • to budget at group or subgroup level, simply pick one account for the budget and then report against actuals at the group or subgroup level
    • metrics from the customer page such as monthly recurring revenue, active customers, new customers etc. – select and enter this data into your template for upload
    • data from google sheets or manual entry fields – these are also available for upload; just tick the boxes for the budget data to include
    • metrics from the metric library – these will be generated automatically using the metrics library formulas as long as the component parts are budgeted using the template

Note that there may be more Metrics than are visible on the screen - you can see the total number of "Metrics selected" above the green box; scroll down (bar at right of box) to see them all.   See screen shot below.

  • Once budget categories are selected, click on Continue (bottom right)
  • Select your date range using the drop down menus
  • Turn off the toggle "Include actuals data in download file" to create a blank template; leave it turned on to create a template which includes actuals for all historic months selected;
  • Download to Excel.
  • Open the downloaded file, update the template in Excel (be sure to use number values only, no formulas), and name and save the file in a location of your choice ready for upload.

Select File and Upload.   The system will let you know once the file has been uploaded successfully and the Upload button will change to say Continue.

You will see a preview of your uploaded budget.  If it looks correct, select Done, otherwise you can Reload File. 

Not uploading as expected?  See Common budget upload issues 

Click Continue; you can see that your file name has been added to the top of the list of Manually Loaded Budgets & Forecasts.

To rename this budget, click on the edit (pencil icon) next to the name.

To make this the default budget, click Assign Default (right side of budget bar).

That's it - your new budget has been uploaded into the system!   This budget is now linked to all your reports, charts and presentations.

Hint:  You will probably need to refresh the page in order to see the new budget in Reports, etc.

To edit an existing budget - or use it as a basis for creating a new one, click on Update or reload (right side of budget bar).  This will take you to the Download Template screen where you can download the file to be edited, pre-populated with the existing budget, then upload it again with any changes or additions.  See How to change a budget:  add a budget for MRR, NRR, churn, customer count, cash balances, or any other metric reported in ScaleXP

For more information on how to report against a consolidated company budget, see How to add a budget to a consolidated company