Demand Plan Budgets
A budget in DemandCaster is a projection of unit demand, revenue, COGS, and margin over a specified current and/or future period of time that is usually compiled and re-evaluated on a periodic basis.
For more information on the value of budgeting in the context of S&OP, we recommend reading the blog post “The Difference Between S&OP and Budgeting & Why it Matters.”
Enable Budget in Grids
To enable the budget line in existing grids, click the "Grid" pop-up and select the budget line. Budget lines are available in Units, Revenue, ASP, COGS, and Margin grids.
When adding a new grid to a tab, all rows are enabled by default.
Creating a Budget
By default, the budgets will not be populated.
There will be two ways to create a budget.
- Downloading a total demand plan, editing as required, and uploading as a budget file.
- Through an in-app Copy Budget function
Please note that the report download and copy functions are a top down process. This means that if you wish to load a budget across the entire company, the download or copy function should be executed at the company level. If sub-sets of the hierarchy need to be copied or downloaded, move to a subset of the hierarchy.
Creating a Budget via an Upload
The easiest way to download the data for a budget is to use an existing demand plan hierarchy or a create a new hierarchy page that will be the basis of the budget. Since the hierarchy is free form, it can include any combination of levels.
Click the report download button to open the report pop-up
Select Total Demand Plan Report
The Demand Plan report may also be downloaded however we recommend the Total Demand Plan since it includes executed events.
Select time frame and the entities to include
Select the time frame and whether to include Units, ASP, or both measures in the download. We recommend both in order to populate revenue and margin.
In regards to time frame, selecting Current Fiscal Year will populate the current fiscal year budget, including past periods, when uploaded.
Click "Run Report" to prepare the data for downloading.
Download the Report
Click the report hyperlink to download the file.
The data is downloaded as a text file that may be opened in excel or your preferred text editor.
Modify as Required
Each row represents a unique context of demand data that is dependent on the page hierarchy that served as the basis for the download.
The unit plan and ASP plan may be modified as required to represent the expected budget. This step is recommended for the past periods in particular since they will typically not represent the actual budget plan.
Prep the Budget for Upload
Rename the file "Budget" and ensure it is saved as tab delimited text file and zipped as described in the article Manually Uploading Data.
Review the Upload File for Errors
Click the upload log to ensure there were no errors in the upload. An advantage of downloading a demand plan based report is that everything is formatted as required to help reduce the likelihood for errors.
Review Demand Plan Budget Lines
The Budget line is now populated with data!
Updating an Existing Budget
Once a budget is populated, you may download the budget report to review and modify the budget.
Rename the file to "Budget" prior to compressing and uploading the file.
Copying a Budget
Copying a budget is an option to create a budget by copying the Total Demand Plan values and populating the Budget line from within the application. This feature works for both past periods and future periods in addition to populating a budget the first time or updating budgets.
The steps to copy a budget are as follows:
- Click on "Copy Budget" button
- Select the date periods to copy the "Total Plan" values.
- Click "Copy" to initiate populating the budget line
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