Set up your budget cycle

Work through this checklist before your first budget cycle. It involves your Finance lead, your HR or people data owner, and a Flowstate admin.

Before you start

• Set up sign-in and invite your team
• Set up your organisation basics
• Load your people and teams

1. Set your fiscal year

What: Tell Flowstate when your financial year starts, so budget requests and budget versions line up with your books. Who: Finance lead. Where: Organisation basics: Set your fiscal year. Done when: Settings → Finance → Frameworks & Fiscal Year shows the right Current fiscal year, and it's saved.

2. Give every budget-holding team a manager

What: Make sure each team that should propose its own budget has a Manager with a Flowstate account. Who: HR or people data owner. Where: Resourcing → People and teams → Teams. See Teams. Done when: The Manager column is filled in for every team that should have a budget.

• When you send a budget request, each team with a manager gets a plan. Teams without one are skipped, and the confirmation message names them.
• If your plans are approved by the manager of the team above (step 4), the top-level team's plan is approved by the person who created the request.
• If you imported teams, check that the people in the Manager Email column have Flowstate accounts.

3. Give people budget permissions

What: Make sure each person in the cycle has a role that lets them do their part. Who: Flowstate admin, agreed with your Finance lead. Where: Settings → Users & Access → Roles. Done when: A test team manager can open My budget, and your Finance lead sees New request on Finance → Budgets → Budget requests.

Who	Their role needs to let them
Finance lead running the cycle	See and create budget requests, accept the budget, and save budget snapshots
Team manager	Edit and submit their team's plan, and see budget requests for their teams
Approver, such as a director	Approve budget plans
Budget admin	Configure or merge budgets. Budget admins can always edit, submit, approve, undo the approval of, and send back any team's plan.
Anyone who uses the Review tab	See financial summaries

Of the built-in roles, Team Manager and Line Manager can edit, submit and approve budget plans. Financial Manager can create, accept and configure budget requests, but not edit, submit or approve a team's plan. Config Admin can do all of it. The exact permissions are in Roles and permissions.

4. Choose how plans are approved

What: Decide who approves each team's plan. Who: Finance lead, then a Flowstate admin saves it. Where: Settings → Finance → Budget Workflow, card Proposal Approval Workflow. See Budget settings. Done when: You see "Budget workflow settings saved" after selecting Save Configuration, and your choice is still there when you reload the page.

Choose one approval mode:

Approval mode	Who approves	Trade-off
Parent-team Manager (the default)	The manager of the team above each team	Follows your team tree with no upkeep, but every level needs a manager.
Specific People	The people you add under Approvers with Add Approver	A small finance group reviews every plan, but carries the whole workload.

In the Budget admins section, decide on Restrict un-merging of plans to budget admins. When it's off (the default), a plan's approver can also undo an approval or send a submitted plan back. When it's on, only budget admins can.

5. Name who accepts the budget

What: Decide who can accept the finished budget, and approve changes to it during the year. Who: Finance lead. Where: Settings → Finance → Budget Workflow, card Final & Financial Approvers, list Financial Approvers. See Budget settings. Done when: The people who sign off the budget are listed under Financial Approvers.

• If you name people here, only they can accept a budget request or approve a mid-year adjustment. Their role also needs to let them accept budgets.
• If the list is empty, anyone whose role lets them accept budgets can do it.
• Accepting a budget saves a new budget version. It never changes your live data.

6. Optional: save a starting budget

What: Save today's forecast as the budget for the year, so you can track against it before your first cycle. Who: Finance lead. Where: Finance → Budgets, then New version → Snapshot live forecast. See Set a budget from the live forecast. Done when: The Budgets tab shows a version for the fiscal year.

You're set up when

• Settings → Finance → Budget Workflow shows your approval mode and your Financial Approvers.
• Every team that should have a budget has a Manager.
• Your Finance lead sees New request on Finance → Budgets → Budget requests.
• A team manager sees My budget in the sidebar. Until a request is sent to them, it says "No budget request assigned to you yet".

Next: day-to-day guides

• Budgets: how a budget run works, and who does what.
• Start a budget run: create a request and send it to your teams.
• Fill in a team's budget: change headcount, hires and pay in your team's plan, then submit it.
• Review, approve or send back: decide on a submitted plan.
• Accept the budget: turn the approved plans into the year's budget.
• Track variance: compare each team's budget with the current forecast.
• Mid-year adjustments: change a team's budget during the year.
• Team transfers: move people between teams' plans during a run.