PI Budget Planning Tool WHAT is the PI Budget Planning Tool? The PI Budget Planning Tool is an application that will be delivered in a series of releases that will increase in feature and function over time. The budget-planning tool is based on the university management report that has been modified to include forecasting and prediction capabilities at the accounting line level for all years of the project. A new report that is based upon the existing management report but now you can forecast based on future expenses without formally encumbering them. This effectively combines a spreadsheet and the University finance reporting system. Plan expected expenses by month and/or year and see how they affect your budget total. Add new people, plan equipment and travel expenses, and see real-time budget totals. WHY is it needed? To make it easier for faculty and staff to plan and know how much money they have available in their grants. WHO is involved? A cross-divisional team of experienced administrators and staff from Vice President of Research, Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP), Financial and Business Services (FBS), and University Information Technology (UIT) are involved. HOW? The PI Budget Planning Tool is available now through the University of Utah Campus Information System. GETTING STARTED Navigation & Layout Login to the Campus Information System with your unid and Password and scroll down to the Financial and Business Report Area. Click on PI Budget Planning Tool
Layout and Navigation Beginning To Plan To begin working on a project, type the project number into the blank project field box. Drop-down box will open. Select your project. Enter the current month and year. Click Submit to view the project.
Changing the View Expanding the Year To expand the year, click the arrow and a drop-down box will appear. Choose the year you want to expand. The year will divide into months. Adding Years To add a year to your project without expanding it into months, select the dash option in the Expand box. Click Add Year. It will add one consecutive year per click. Viewing Years You may hide years by hovering over any year, and then clicking the drop down arrow that appears. Click the Columns button. Select or deselect the box next to the year you want to see or hide. Entering and Editing Data Account Description You may add new expenses and employees depending on the account you are adding them under. Click the green plus sign to the left of the account you are adding to. Enter the title or name in the box that appears. You may delete an employee or expense by clicking the red minus button to the left of the entry. You will notice a red triangle in the top left of the entry. This indicates your entry has not been saved. To save your entries, click the Save button at the bottom or top of the page. The red triangle should disappear after you have saved, indicating your save was successful. Financial Values Yearly Values You may change values only in the year columns to the right side of yellow note pad icons. This text will not be bolded, indicating you may change the values. You may not change values in the Forecasted Balance column. To change a value, click on the value you want to change. A white box will appear. Enter your value.
Click out of the box. The red triangle will appear, if you do not save the current value. Click the save button to the top or bottom of the page to save the current page. Should you decide to expand the year view into monthly view, the total yearly amount will divide up evenly in each month. Monthly Values Expand the year view into monthly view. Click on value in the month column you would like to change. Change and save value as you would in the yearly view. The yearly amount will add up the total of all the monthly values entered. It will remained saved just as you entered per month; it will not divide up evenly per month should you decide to switch back to a single year view. The values you enter in the monthly or yearly columns will be totaled up and added to the Forecasted Balance. Tools Note Pad The note pad is the yellow icon between the Budget Balance column and the Forecasted Balance column. This tool allows you to write reminders, explanations, or comments regarding the information in each note s respective row. To add a note, click on one of the icons. A text box will appear. Type your text, and then press save. You can now access and edit or change that note at any time by clicking the icon you added text to. Further Information In the Encumbered column, many values appear in blue. To view further information regarding these values, click the blue value. A box will appear and will provide you with more information about this value. This box will also allow you to run an encumbrance report depending on the type of report you select.
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