Question 1

What is business budgeting?

Accepted Answer

Business budgeting represents a detailed financial plan that outlines an organisation's expected revenues, expenses, and capital expenditures over a specific period, typically a fiscal year. More importantly, corporate budgeting is not only about how much the company should spend, but also how/on what; it is the most important strategic tool for helping companies achieve their goals.

Question 2

How is business budgeting different from budget tracking?

Accepted Answer

Business budgeting is the process of forecasting how much your company plans to spend over a certain period of time. Budget tracking is consistently monitoring business spend and aligning it with the initial budget, making sure that the company is staying within its bounds.

Question 3

What's the difference between FP&A tools and Payhawk budgets?

Accepted Answer

Financial planning and analytics (FP&A) tools are the gold standard for calculating the budget of mid-market and enterprise companies. FP&A software is typically used solely by finance teams to create their budgets and various financial reports. FP&A tools are typically not meant to be accessed by non-finance employees as the data in those tools is extremely sensitive.

Therefore, when finance teams want to share these budgets with the rest of the organisation, like heads of departments and other budget owners, they can use Payhawk Budgets. Payhawk Budgets provides budget owners with real-time access and visibility over budget utilisation and how it is impacted by all types of spend - cards, reimbursements, fund requests, subscriptions, purchase orders, and invoice payments.

Question 4

How can Payhawk budgets eliminate the need to use spreadsheets?

Accepted Answer

Typically finance teams will create business budgets in an FP&A tool, their ERP, or even a spreadsheet. Regardless of their preferred tool for budgeting and forecasting, finance teams often end up sharing these budgets with the wider organisation using complex spreadsheets with multiple formulas and, most importantly, static information on spend which quickly becomes out-of-date.

Payhawk Budgets provides finance teams with an alternative means to track spending and communicate budgets internally instead of the classic spreadsheet, which is extremely easy to break and requires constant manual updating. Payhawk tracks all corporate spending in real time and provides valuable insights into budget utilisation so that budget owners have a user-friendly format to view their budgets and make better decisions.

Question 5

Can I create custom budget templates with Payhawk budgets?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it only takes a minute. You can generate a custom budget template through the Payhawk platform and select all dimensions on which your budgets are based: team/department, location, category, or any custom requirement. The other parameter you have to define is the start month of your fiscal year. This is enough to generate your custom template.

In the template, you can enter all your budgets and determine the owner of each budget, the currency (yes, each budget can have a different currency from the rest), and each of the dimensions it is determined by. Our template also enables you to easily establish a hierarchical structure and identify sub-budgets within a budget.

Question 6

What makes Payhawk budgets different?

Accepted Answer

Payhawk Budgets are made for the sophisticated needs of finance teams in mid-market and enterprise companies. We have taken into account their requirements and delivered a solution that ticks all the boxes:
- Budgets can be created in any currency
- Budgets can have endless dimensions and support any hierarchy
- Budget utilisation is based on all types of spend, not just card or invoices - it considers purchase requests, subscriptions, fund requests, reimbursements, invoices
- You can upload all your budgets with just a few clicks, saving yourself lots of valuable time
- Payhawk lets you maintain a view of multiple forecasts of the same year, so you don't lose sight of your budget's past iterations
- You can create multiple fiscal years ahead so you are not constrained to having just one forecast.

Question 7

Can I edit budgets in Payhawk?

Accepted Answer

Absolutely! Not only can you edit budgets, but you can also save your previous forecasts and create as many new forecasts as needed, such as after closing each month or quarter. Payhawk allows you to keep track of all previous iterations without deleting or overriding them (unless you choose to), giving you unparalleled visibility and control over your budgeting process.

Question 8

Do Payhawk budgets work on cash principle or accrual?

Accepted Answer

Payhawk is a solution geared towards mid-market and enterprise companies which use accrual accounting. Our Budgets feature also works using the accruals principle: budget utilisation takes into account amortisation scheduling, service period, and document dates instead of using the payment date.

Question 9

Do budgets in Payhawk proactively restrict or limit spend?

Accepted Answer

The purpose of Payhawk budgets is to provide better visibility on budget utilisation and to enable budget owners to make informed decisions by having them review the potential impact on their budget before they approve an expense or a request. Our solution does not restrict or limit spend based on your budget; budget owners are empowered to demonstrate financial discipline and agility when making well-informed decisions.

Question 10

Can I upload multiple budget forecasts in Payhawk?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can upload multiple budget forecasts and keep track of all of them on the platform. You can keep all previous iterations without deleting or overriding them (unless you choose to), so you have unparalleled visibility and control.

Question 11

What is a budget owner in Payhawk and what rights do they have?

Accepted Answer

A budget owner in Payhawk is someone who is responsible for one or more budgets. They can view their budget and sub-budgets, analyse and filter spend by a variety of dimensions (suppliers, employees, categories, etc), and approve or decline any expense requests. Payhawk will automatically detect if an expense of any type (card, bank transfer, subscription or even a purchase request) affects one or multiple budgets and will include the respective budget owners as approvers.
A budget owner will be asked to review this expense and will be shown how this approval would impact the respective budget. The budget owner can therefore approve it or deny the request.

BUSINESS BUDGET TRACKING Track budgets in real time for unparalleled visibility and control

Cut the noise and empower every budget owner

Keep every type of spend on budget

Business budget tracking, but better

Simplify budget tracking for everyone

Finance teams

FP&A/Business partners

Budget owners

Finance teams

FP&A/Business partners

Budget owners

Our budget tracking processes at a glance

1. Generate your budget template in under a minute

2. Upload all your budgets, at once

3. Track budget utilisation in real-time

4. Adjust and compare forecasts

1. Generate your budget template in under a minute

2. Upload all your budgets, at once

3. Track budget utilisation in real-time

4. Adjust and compare forecasts

All the features you need to take your budget management to the next level

Unlimited dimensions

Custom budget hierarchy

Single-click imports

Budgets in any currency

Extensive budget filtering

Budget view during approval

Group budgets

Accrual tracking

Unlimited forecasts

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