Starting on Monday, December 19th, GMAS users will be able to submit GL budgets through GMAS. If you have never submitted a budget to the GL, you’re probably asking yourself, “why should I bother with GL budgets”. Well, here are some great reasons why:
Having a GL budget
Assists with the increased requirements from sponsors to report budget to expenditure variances
Helps to proactively manage/identify the need for re-budget requests to sponsors
Reduces compliance requests of object codes that are budgeted
Helps to minimize overexpenditures
Aligns sponsored records (budget) with data in GMAS and the GL
Allows better use of OBI and PI Dashboard
OBI: Having a GL budget means that you can easily identify in OBI which object codes you have not spent down. The Current, Historical, and Printable Grants Financial dashboards all include the GL budget and calculates the remaining balance (budget minus expenses). You can use OBI to easily identify when you have a difference between your allocated amount for a subactivity and the GL budget, so that you can identify what adjustments you need to make. The Award Amounts & Cash Position page of the Sponsored Accounts dashboard includes the GL Sponsored budget and calculates a Budget Variance for each subactivity (allocated amount minus GL budget).
PI Dashboard: The PI Dashboard allows a user to perform projections for an account or for the entire faculty portfolio. While the projection module within the user interface of the PI Dashboard uses the amounts allocated/obligated to sponsored accounts in GMAS to perform projections, the root and accounts reports use the Sponsored Budgets that have been uploaded to the General Ledger. The reports use the Sponsored budgets from the G/L as a starting point then uses actual expenses (as of the previous closed month) and projected funding and expenses to determine when the budgeted funds will be exhausted. Therefore, the utility of the reports is dependent on the existence of an accurate and complete budget uploaded to the GL.
Now that you’ve read all of the perks of having a GL budget and plan to start submitting yours, you may be asking yourself “why would I submit GL budgets through GMAS when I have ADI or WASABI”. The “Edit GL budget” screen in GMAS was designed to make object code look-up easy, perform overhead and fringe calculations for the user, prevent submissions for disabled accounts, and to provide an overall easy way for users to submit their account budgets to the GL. This should prove to be a huge improvement for folks that currently use ADI. For WASABI users, the screen was designed to provide all of the same perks that WASABI has. And hey, if you’re in GMAS anyway, how nice is it to be able to submit your GL budgets from the same place you manage your sponsored projects!
Since you are really excited now to see the screen and learn more about how it works, here is a link to some great documentation related to the new “Edit GL budget” screen:
If you have any questions about the new “Edit GL budgets” screen, please feel free to email contactgmas@harvard.edu.