Guest Blogger Series - Alison Wellman Smith from HUIT: OBI and Sponsored Budgets

Given the wonderful new process to upload sponsored budget to the General Ledger in GMAS, I wanted to take a second to talk about how OBI works with the GL Sponsored Budgets.  GL Sponsored Budgets can be found in a few different OBI dashboards: Sponsored Accounts, Current Grants Financial, Historical Grants Financial, and Printable Grants Financial dashboards.

The Sponsored Accounts dashboard provides expense, income, and budget information at the subactivity, or 33-digit, level.  There are two budget-related columns in this dashboard: Current GL Sponsored Budget and Budget Variance.  The Current GL Sponsored Budget column provides the budget for the life of the subactivity through the night before the dashboard was run.  This information is also what you would see in GMAS.  The Budget Variance shows the difference between the amount allocated to subactivity (Allocated Amount column) and the Current GL Sponsored Budget.  Ideally, the uploaded budget should match the amount allocated to the subactivity.  If you show something other than $0 in the Budget Variance column, you may need to make some adjustments to your GL Sponsored Budget… preferably using the simple tool in GMAS!

The Grants Financial dashboards provide the GL Sponsored Budget at the object code level.  The dashboards also provide the amount remaining of the GL Sponsored Budget and the percent expended of the GL Sponsored Budget.  To make these columns more useful to you, I recommend using the same object codes for your budgeting process that you plan to spend against. 

There is one difference in the way the Grants Financial dashboards look at the budget from the CREW Period Expense Report (PER).  The Summary Info page of the Current and Historical Grants Financial dashboards include the Current GL Sponsored Budget as discussed with the Sponsored Accounts Dashboard.  This information is what was included in CREW PER.  However, the Object Roll Up, Direct & Indirect Costs, and Period Transactions pages of those dashboards, as well as the Printable Grants Financial dashboard include the Project to Date GL Sponsored Budget.  The Project to Date GL Sponsored Budget reflects the life of the budget through the end of the period selected.  This change gives the user a better reflection of the budget for the period of time selected in the prompts.

Quick tip:  With the creation of the Project to Date GL Sponsored Budget column, we have learned that the effective date of the budget uploads does matter.  Changes to a budget will not be reflective until after the effective date in the General Ledger.  So, we recommend that you keep up to date on your budgeting to avoid confusion for yourself or others later on.