Planning

Yarken Planning helps organizations create, manage, review, approve, and publish budgets, forecasts, and workforce plans. It supports collaboration between finance owners, budget process owners, cost center owners, and contributors so that planning data can be reviewed, approved, and used as a baseline for reporting and spend analysis.

Use Planning to:

• Create budgets and forecasts for a specific fiscal year.

• Allocate planned spend to cost centers, accounts, expense types, and vendors.

• Add month-wise budget or forecast values.

• Import planning data from a file.

• Load budget or forecast values from Cost Transparency.

• Apply CPI or LPI variables where applicable.

• Collaborate with cost center owners or budget contributors.

• Comment on individual budget or forecast items.

• Submit budgets or forecasts for review and approval.

• Approve, reject, cancel, or reset budget and forecast plans.

• Set an approved budget or forecast as the baseline.

• Review budget and forecast reporting by cost center, account, vendor, or month.

• Use workforce planning to estimate people-related financial impact.

Planning capabilities

Planning includes the following capabilities:

Planning roles

The main roles in budget and forecast planning are:

Budget Process Owner

A Budget Process Owner manages the overall budget or forecast process.

A Budget Process Owner can:

• Create budgets and forecasts.

• Add, edit, import, reset, or delete budget and forecast items.

• Assign budgets or forecasts to contributors.

• Submit budgets or forecasts to contributors for review.

• Review submitted updates.

• Approve or reject budgets and forecasts.

• Set approved budgets or forecasts as the baseline.

Budget Contributor

A Budget Contributor reviews and updates assigned budget or forecast items.

A Budget Contributor can:

• Review assigned budget or forecast items.

• Add or update line items.

• Add comments.

• Reset or delete items when allowed.

• Submit the budget or forecast back to the Budget Process Owner for approval.

Budget and forecast workflow

The Planning workflow usually follows these steps:

Create the budget or forecast plan

• The Budget Process Owner creates a budget or forecast for a selected fiscal year.

Add or load planning items

• The Budget Process Owner adds budget or forecast items manually, imports a file, creates an empty plan, or loads data from Cost Transparency.

Submit to contributors

• The Budget Process Owner submits the budget or forecast to Budget Contributors for review and updates.

Review and update

• Budget Contributors review assigned items, update values, add comments, and add new items if needed.

Submit for approval

• Budget Contributors submit their updates back to the Budget Process Owner.

Approve or reject

• The Budget Process Owner reviews the submitted values. If the values are acceptable, the plan is approved. If changes are required, the plan is rejected and returned for revision.

Set as baseline

• After approval, the Budget Process Owner sets the budget or forecast as the baseline. This publishes the approved values into the Yarken spend model for reporting and variance analysis.

Budget and forecast statuses

Budgets and forecasts can have the following statuses:

Where to go next

• Understand the end-to-end workflow

• Create a budget or forecast

• Manage budgets or forecast items

• Configure additional fields or currency exchange rates

• Review assigned cost center planning items

• Use Budget Overview to analyze annual budgets

• Use Forecast Overview to analyze annual forecast

• Workforce planning