Budgets

A budget run sets next year's workforce budget with your team managers rather than for them. Finance starts the run, each manager proposes their team's budget, approvers roll it up the team tree, and finance accepts it as the year's budget.

If you don't need managers to propose anything, snapshot the forecast as a budget instead.

How a run works

Step	Who	Guide
1. Start the run and send it to team managers	Finance lead	Start a budget run
2. Fill in the team's budget and submit it	Each team manager	Fill in your team's budget
3. Approve it, or send it back	The manager of the team above, or named approvers	Review, approve or send back a team budget
4. Accept the budget once every team is approved	Finance lead	Accept the budget
5. Track the forecast against it through the year	Finance leads and managers	Track the forecast against your budget
6. Change a team's budget during the year	Managers propose, finance approves	Change a team's budget mid-year

Budgets roll up. When a team's budget is approved, its changes join the budget of the team above, and that manager submits the combined budget to the next level.

Each team's budget is built in layers. The team's own changes sit on top of the run's base plan, and the base plan sits on top of your live records. Until the budget is accepted, changes to your live records — a new starter, a pay rise — keep flowing into every team's budget.

Accepting a budget never changes your live records. The hires, moves and pay rises agreed in the budget still have to be made in live data, or built in a scenario and merged.

Lock the budget and let the forecast move on

There's nothing extra to switch on. When you accept the budget, or take a snapshot, Flowstate saves a frozen copy for the fiscal year. From then on:

• the budget stays as it was when you accepted it;
• the forecast keeps following your live records, so it moves with every hire, leaver and pay change;
• the difference between the two shows as drift.

To change the budget itself later, change a team's budget mid-year, or save a new version with a new run or snapshot.

Before your first run

• Your fiscal year, reporting currency and exchange rates are set. See Organisation basics.
• Every team that should propose its own budget has a Manager with a Flowstate account. See People and teams.
• You've chosen who approves. See Choose who approves budgets.
• The forecast looks right, because every team's budget starts from it.

Request statuses

Shown on Finance → Budgets → Budget requests.

Status	Meaning
Draft	Created but not sent to managers yet.
In Progress	Sent to team managers. Budgets are being filled in and approved.
In Review	Every team's budget is approved. Ready to accept.
Accepted	Accepted as the year's budget.
Closed	Ended without a budget.

Team budget statuses

Each team's status shows as a tag on its row under Team budgets on the request's Overview, and beside the team's name at the top of its budget. On the Overview, a short note under the tag says what has to happen next — see Follow the run on the Overview.

Status	Meaning
Not Started	Nobody has changed it yet.
In Progress	Changes made, not yet submitted.
Submitted	Submitted and waiting for the approver.
In Review	The approver is looking at it.
Changes requested	Sent back to the manager with a comment.
Approved	Approved. A top-level team's budget stays here until the budget is accepted.
Merged	Approved and rolled up into the budget of the team above.

Where things are

Screen	What it's for
My budget, at the top of the sidebar	A manager's own team budgets
Finance → Budgets → Budgets	Budget versions by fiscal year. Open one to see its figures, drift and mid-year changes
Finance → Budgets → Budget requests	Every budget run and its status. Open one to follow, review and approve team budgets
Finance → Budgets → Review	Runs whose team budgets are all approved, waiting to be accepted
Finance → Budgets → AI caps	Spending caps on AI tools — not part of the workforce budget. See AI budgets