Funds Management Budget Approval Suite
Tie appropriation and budget requests to an approval flow — keep budget under control.
What problem does it solve?
In public and corporate structures, appropriation/budget requests and transfers are often approved manually; budget discipline, availability control and audit trail stay weak and the request process is fragmented.
How does the solution work?
Conforcus's FM budget approval suite ties appropriation and budget requests to a defined approval process, managing requests, revisions and transfers integrated with the FM budget structure and availability control, with full traceability.
What changes in practice?
The suite runs on top of the FM budget structure. An appropriation request, a revision or a transfer is created in the system with the budget items it concerns and its amount, and enters the defined approval process. Until the approval steps are complete the FM budget does not change; when sign-off is given, the budget update is triggered automatically. Because availability control checks spending against this current, approved budget, an unapproved increase or transfer has no effect on the available amount. Request, approval and budget posting move forward linked to each other in the same system.
For the budget and finance unit, daily work shifts from collecting requests from different channels and submitting them for approval by hand to monitoring the flow. The stage of every request is visible, and an approved change does not wait to be entered into the budget separately. The public-sector budget owner can trace end to end which requests, revisions and transfers brought an appropriation to its current amount, and the same trail is presented in audits. Budget discipline rests on the process itself, not on individuals keeping track: a change that has not been approved does not reach the budget, and availability control works on the approved budget.
Benefits
- Appropriation/budget requests pass through a defined approval process
- Stronger budget discipline and availability control
- Requests, revisions and transfers auditable end to end
Where it sits in SAP
Integrated with FM budgeting and availability control; routes appropriation request, revision and transfer steps through approval and triggers the budget update after sign-off. Proven in public-sector and corporate budget structures.
Who it is for: Public-sector Budget Owner, Budget & Finance Director, Strategy Development
Frequently asked questions
Which SAP module is the suite based on, and does it work if we do not use FM?
The suite is built on SAP Funds Management (FM) and works integrated with the FM budget structure and availability control. Appropriations and budget therefore need to be managed in FM. Where FM is not in use, the FM budget structure has to be set up first, and the approval process is then defined on that structure.
Does the suite also cover spending approval, and what happens when spending exceeds the budget?
The suite's scope is the budget side: appropriation and budget requests, revisions and transfers pass through the approval process. Spending is checked by FM availability control against the approved budget, and a posting that exceeds the available amount is caught by that control. In that case the way forward is to raise a revision or transfer request for the item concerned and continue with the budget as updated after approval.
How are appropriation transfers and revisions traced in an audit?
Because request, revision and transfer steps all pass through the approval process and the budget update is triggered after sign-off, every budget change made through the suite has an approved request behind it. How an appropriation moved from its initial amount to its current amount is traced end to end through these steps. In an audit, this trail in the system is presented instead of compiling a separate approval file.