tary or unit based. Monetary values may be in local, functional or group budgeting currencies, so budgeting systems should allow for:multicurrency budget entry, currencies and exchange rates monetary and/or unit based budget numbers plus conversion factors selective budget reporting based on original or converted units Budgets can be entered in a number of versions. These versions may need to be changed to reflect the impact of real-world operational results on the budget numbers, which requires:"plan" budget numbers that can be locked if required to prevent changes multiple "revised" budget numbers to reflect new expectations multiple "forecast" budget numbers to accommodate actuals or new "what-if" rates Budget entry and reporting. Budget entry templates can be used to make the completion and automated collection of budget data easier and less error-prone. Budget security should define entry, revise or view-only rights for classes of user. Budget locking may be required to ensure that the year plan cannot be revised once it has been decided and approved. Budgets should not always need to be recorded individually either as journal entries or as values in worksheet cells because systems can offer automated, rule-driven budget allocation functions such as: auto allocating a single-year budget across periods or quarters auto allocating management fee budgets across multiple entities based on revenues creating next year's budget based on this year's actuals plus or minus a percentage or value spreading budgets across departments or projects based on allocation formulas or rules If budgeting systems are connected in real time to the accounting systems managing the actual numbers, then exception alerting and commitment or encumbrance monitoring should also be possible. Managers can be alerted via e-mail to exceptions that occur when ...
