Budget Plan Approval Process Overview

Budget Plan Approval Process Overview Video

After one or more portfolio budget plan scenarios have been created by the budget planner, the planner typically sends one or more unapproved plan scenarios out for review to stakeholders, sends proposed project allocations to project managers for budget negotiations, and then sends the final plan scenario out for approval. There are default workflows built into the application to accommodate these processes. If your organization created custom workflows to follow your required business practices, then the process described here might be different for you.

Before the process begins, you should set the workflows for each stage of the process and assign users to the various approval process roles.

Scenarios can be sent for review and approval by the budget planner from either the Budget Planning page or from the Published Views page. There are four options for reviewing or approving a scenario. Send for Review, Propose, and Send for Approval are optional steps.

• Send for Review: The scenario is sent to users assigned the Reviewer role at the portfolio level. These users are typically a committee of people from different departments in the organization that review proposed scenarios before approval, referred to as stakeholders. The reviewers receive notifications about one or more scenarios that include a link to the Scenario Comparison page. On the Scenario Comparison page, reviewers can analyze the data, compare scenarios, and give feedback to the budget planner per scenario using the Discussions panel for each scenario.
• Propose: The scenario is sent to users assigned the Owner role (typically project managers) for each project listed in the budget plan. This action is typically done when the budget planner has completed the what-if and scenario planning, has had a stakeholder review that resulted in narrowing down to one scenario to be proposed, and is ready to negotiate with the project owner the project dates and proposed budget allocation. The project owners receive notifications about the scenario that include a link to the Cash Flow page. On the Cash Flow page, the project owners can review the dates and proposed budget allocations from the budget planner and have the option to accept the budget or request changes.
• Send for Approval: The scenario is sent to users assigned the Approver role at the portfolio level. The approvers receive notification about the scenario that includes a link to the scenario on the Budget Planning page. On the Budget Planning page, the approver can review the data in the scenario and provide any final comments and notify the budget planner of approval of the scenario by entering comments in the Discussion panel for the scenario.
• Approve: After final comments have been received from the reviewers, the budget planner can mark this plan as approved. If the scenario does not require an approval process, the budget planner can select to approve the scenario without having it routed to anyone.

When a budget plan scenario is approved, the proposed budgets become the approved budget values for each project, and the approved scenario becomes the budget plan for the planning period.