Depending on a church's administrative needs, a budget sheet of all budgetable accounts can be exported from the Budgets view and used in a budget meeting. Values can then be added to the spreadsheet directly and imported into Ledger at a later time.
Users typically use one or both of the approaches below when creating a budget for their church's income and expense accounts.
- Estimating an annual budgeted amount for each account, dividing it evenly over the twelve months of a fiscal year.
- Estimating a different monthly amount for each account. Some monthly amounts may match but all months would not be identical.
The budget importer is capable of importing both annual and monthly amounts. The importer preferences monthly amounts over annual amounts. Meaning if the importer sees both monthly and an annual amount for an account the monthly amount(s) will be imported. To use an annual amount for an account, enter zeroes for the monthly amount and type the annual amount in the total column. This will force the importer to use the annual budget amount.
To import budgets from a previously exported spreadsheet,
1. Go into Ledger from the Navigation bar. If your site has multiple books, you'll want to make sure you have the correct book selected in the upper right corner.
2. Click the Budgets tab to view all of your current budgets.
3. Click the "Change" link to change your budget fiscal year, if needed.
4. To the right of the page, click "Import" and choose the CSV file you want to import.
5. In the window that appears, the columns will auto-match by the name of the column header. If the importer does not find a match, the user will need to manually match any column not connected. You may also click the "x" to the right to unselect a chosen column.
6. Click "Account Matching" to match each row found in the file to an existing account in the system. The accounts will auto-match based on the Account Identifier. Click the "x" to the right to unselect a chosen account. Account types, parent accounts, and accounts with no budgets edited need not be matched.
7. Click "Review" to double-check your budget amounts against those in the spreadsheet. Monthly values that have updates will be shown in black while values with no changes will be shown in grey.
- If all looks accurate, click "Import" to continue the import process.
- If any of the amounts are incorrect, click the "x" at the top right, edit the spreadsheet as needed, and start again.