Start a budget run

Use this at the start of annual planning, when you want each team manager to propose their team's budget for the year.

You need access to create budget requests — ask your Flowstate admin.

Before you start

• Every team that should propose a budget has a Manager with a Flowstate account.
• You've chosen who approves budgets.
• The forecast looks right. Every team's budget starts from it.

Create the request

1. Go to Finance → Budgets → Budget requests and select New request.
2. Choose the Fiscal Year.
3. Optionally, add a Reason.
4. Tick Remove open vacancies from the baseline if managers should start without today's open vacancies. They can add back the hires they want.
5. Select Create Request.

Choose the fiscal year, then select Create Request.

Choose the fiscal year, then select Create Request.

The request is saved as Draft. Nobody is told about it yet.

Add changes every team starts from

Every team's budget is built on the run's base plan, which is built on your live records. Put anything every team should start from in the base plan — a company-wide pay rise, or a hire the whole organisation has agreed.

1. Open the request. On Overview, select Edit base plan.
2. People and teams opens inside the base plan. Nothing you change here touches your live records.
3. Make the changes the same way you would in live data. Roadmap is also under Make changes in the sidebar, and Forecast under See the impact shows what the changes cost.
4. Select Back to budget request.

Do this before you send the run, so managers start from the right numbers. You can still change the base plan afterwards, and teams see the change in their budgets. But if a team has changed the same thing in its own budget, its approver has to choose which to keep. See Resolve merge conflicts.

Only people who can create budget requests see Edit base plan.

Send it to team managers

1. Open the request and select Send to team managers.
2. Select Confirm. You can't take this back.

Every team with a manager gets its own budget to fill in, and the manager gets an Inbox task and an email. The request moves to In Progress.

Follow the run on the Overview

Open the request from Finance → Budgets → Budget requests. Overview shows where the whole run is up to.

The figures at the top

Figure	What it shows
Forecast, labelled with the fiscal year — for example 2025/26 Forecast	The run's cost for the fiscal year
FTE	Average FTE across the fiscal year
Employees, Contractors, Vacancies	How many the run's plan has

The figures include the base plan and every team budget approved so far, and each shows how much it has changed from your live records. After a change, Updating… shows while they're recalculated.

The top of the page also has Export, the run's next step — Send to team managers, then Accept — and a menu to close or delete the request.

Team budgets

Every team in your organisation is listed, with sub-teams indented under their parent. The count beside Team budgets says how many are approved and how many are still awaited.

To find a team, use Search teams…, or narrow the list with a filter:

Filter	Shows teams whose budget is
All	Any status
Waiting	Not started, in progress, or sent back for changes
Ready	Submitted and waiting for approval
Approved	Approved, including budgets already rolled up into the team above
No proposal	Not in this run yet

Each row shows the team's Status, its Approvers — who submits, then who approves — and its Actions: Review to see the team's changes, and a tick to approve. Hover over a greyed-out action to see why it's unavailable.

Under each status, a note says what has to happen next:

Note	What it means
Not yet sent to teams	The team has a manager but no budget yet, usually because the run hasn't been sent
No manager assigned	The team has no manager, so it has no budget. Use Assign…
Awaiting submission from a name	That person hasn't submitted the team's budget yet
Awaiting approval from a name	Submitted, and waiting for that approver
Ready for your approval	Submitted, and you're its approver. See Review, approve or send back a team budget
Returned for changes	Sent back to the manager
Approved	Approved

Give an owner to a team without a manager

Teams without a manager are skipped when you send the request. To have someone fill in their budget:

1. On the request's Overview, find the team under Team budgets and select Assign….
2. Select Assign to me, or choose someone under Assignee.
3. Select Assign.

What happens next

• Managers fill in their budgets from My budget. See Fill in your team's budget.
• If a team's manager changes during the run, the new manager takes over the team's budget.
• When every team's budget is approved, the request moves to In Review by itself. Then accept the budget.

Tip

The request has no due date and Flowstate doesn't send reminders, so agree a deadline with your managers.

Close or delete a request

Open the request's menu:

• Close request ends the run without a budget. Team budgets can no longer be changed, and the request stays in the list.
• Delete request removes the request and every team's budget in it. You can't delete a request once it's accepted.

If something's not right

"A budget request for … already exists." You can only have one open request per fiscal year. Finish or close the existing one first.

A team shows No proposal. It had no manager when you sent the request. Use Assign…, or give the team a manager.

There's no Edit base plan. Your role doesn't let you create budget requests. Ask your Flowstate admin.

You picked the wrong fiscal year. Delete the request and create it again.